“Idiot,” one Destroyer mutters.
“Weakling.”
“Agitator.”
“Troublemaker.”
“Fool.”
He is buoyant. He is unaware of the cold. He plants his feet flat on the ice, rears back, drinks the aurora. Red and yellow and green and blue go cycling through his brain. He laughs. He capers. He leaps over one prostrate Destroyer after another. Gluttony has made them torpid. They are coils uncoiled, springs unsprung. He scrambles up a black boulder and looses a bolt of aurora-fire at the perimeter of the ice; it hisses, it sizzles, it melts, it vanishes. He cuts a strip off the border, revealing moist dark soil. While the stagnant beasts lie useless he will obliterate all the ice, and then he will make his escape. Colors and textures shimmer in his inflamed mind. His head swims; he purples with joy and excitement and hurls another fiery bolt at the distant rim of ice. Boiling molecules drift toward the heavens. How much can he remove before the Destroyers cast off their stagnation? Already he has undone nearly all of their day’s work. “See? The feeble prehistoric has his powers, too,” he tells them. “What dulls your minds catalyzes mine.” He has always wished for the opportunity to do valuable, constructive service. Now he will restore fertility to this frost-blighted area. Let the Destroyers beware; they have let loose a mighty force! Yet already he is past his high. Yellow spiderwebs are congealing over the surface of his brain. The beam of energy that he hurls at the ice has lost its vigor; it droops and barely kindles a glow.
Is there more meat?
He pokes in the mound of bones and shards. Bits of skin, lumps of fat, the dismal deflated trunks, a strand of ligament—the Destroyers seem to have picked the carcass almost clean. No. Here. A wedge of bright red flesh, overlooked. Clay seizes it. Hot against his fingertips. Eats.
Potent again. Sends forth blaze.
He eradicates another dozen square yards of ice before he feels inertia ensnaring him. Reluctantly he realizes he must abandon his task. Escape now, while his captors snore. He runs, sliding and stumbling and occasionally falling, under a canopy of exploding stars. Which way is the exit? The Destroyers are out of sight. The aurora dims and moonless darkness takes root. He fears that in his blindness he will wander somehow back to the Destroyer camp. Wait until morning? Perhaps too late, then. He will be in the grip of demons again unless. But how can he find his way out? There are no landmarks. There is only ice.
He walks on. The cold has invaded his testicles; they clatter together, clicking like marbles in their pouch. The last kinetic shreds of the magical meat dissolve sadly in his gut. By brief auroral flickers he guides himself uncertainly, full of fear, wishing he could stop somewhere to rest and get warm. A quick cigarette. A cup of cocoa. The roof of his mouth turns to hot buttered toast and it maddens him. It is summer, now, in Clayton, Missouri. The hickories and elms are burdened with green. Gently the brook gurgles; trout wiggle on the hook. In the evenings one goes into town: steak and bourbon on Fifth Street, some jazz, then the place just off Lindell, where girls in diaphanous nighties smile, breasts bobbling, pink diaphanous nighties, yes, soft lights, diaphanous, girls with diaphanous crotch and you look for the exit and find yourself.
In the mud.
Primeval ooze. This is the place where, from afar, he was melting ice. The thaw has touched the earth below. All is in quagmire. He swims in slime. The warm gelatinous suspension of spuming soil slides up over his skin. He wriggles forward. It is not unpleasant. The hot silty mire defrosts his genitals. The dark lubricant caresses his refrigerated thighs. He crawls through the vagina of the world. He wallows. He writhes. Here the mud is three or four feet deep, some of it almost liquid, some merely clayey, and the touch of it is voluptuous and delicious. He is leaving the ice behind; he is eluding the sluggish Destroyers. Mud smears his belly, his chest, his face; it engulfs him entirely, and he fears for a moment that he will slip below the surface and be lost, but he finds solid footing underneath and pushes onward. When the going exhausts him, he lies still, pumping his hips gently to drive his throbbing organ into the yielding stickiness on which he sprawls. Then he scrambles onward. I need not be ashamed of returning to the mud, he tells himself. I know who I am. I know what I am. Why struggle to keep up appearances? Only one who has recently emerged from the ooze will feel tight about getting back into it for a while. I am secure in the knowledge of my humanity. If I choose I am free to love the mud.
As the first gray slivers of morning arrive, he frees himself from the morass. Thuck! goes the mud as he severs the suction. A coating of slime covers him. Naked no longer. Where is the exit? Ahead, he sees dimly, lies some kind of boulevard bordered by two rows of tall, stately trees. Dawn climbs his back as he sets out on the road. He walks with an easy, relaxed stride. The mud dries and he brushes most of it off, leaving only the dusty residue. There is a sudden swelling of light as the day leaps over him. It is warm here. He is back in the garden-world. He hopes now to find a clear, cool stream where he can wash himself. And then to seek the Skimmers; he does not care to wander guideless.
“You are not guideless,” a growling voice declares.
He discovers that two Destroyers accompany him, padding along gently to his rear, one on his left, one on his right. They are fully alert, as menacing and as intensely physical as ever: their gluttony has refreshed them and they have caught up easily with him. Will they punish him for thawing their ice? He walks a little faster, though he knows how futile that is. The road continues, perfectly straight, an arrow aimed at the horizon; the bordering rows of trees form flawless walls. The day is mild. The sky is cloudless. The Destroyers are silent.
He feels the weight of their terrible pride.
He hears Wrong’s lilting sob.
He sees a smear of red in front of him, like sunrise perversely rebounding out of the west.
Shortly comes the smell of ashes and the taste of heat. Bits of cinder float on the air. Waves of distortion assail the straightness of the road. The trees, which have been uniformly upright and tall, now become gnarled stunted things, with charred and twisted branches void of leaves. “Where are we?” he asks one of his Destroyers, and the sleek beast-man perhaps replies or perhaps does not, but Clay becomes aware that he has reached the place that is known as Fire.
19
It is another of the districts of discomfort. Once, maybe, it was a forest, with splendid trees connected by a tight, bouncy network of glistening green vines. But there has been devastation, not just once but continuously. The ground is a deep carpet of ash. He feels the cold clinkers at the bottom and the warmer embers near the surface. The air is soot-stained. Spirals of greasy blue smoke rise from conical heaps of ash at irregular intervals. The trunks of the trees are blackened, glossy with the scars of combustion. The vines hang in angular, disheveled loops, split open where the flames have licked them.
The heat is no longer intense; whatever conflagration has blazed here has nearly exhausted itself, settling into an amiable low-grade smolder. Nothing is too hot to touch, though warmth is everywhere. But the place gives the impression of having undergone repeated scorchings. This is a used-up place. It is wholly oxidized; it is completely depleted. A dull ruddy glow gleams beneath some of the ash heaps, telling him that he is wrong about that: if it burns, it still lives. A little. Yet there must not be far to go. Waiting for the end, boys; it won’t be long.
He moves through the rubble. Clouds of ash leap up with every step. Haze veils the sun. An acrid carbonized taste invades his nostrils.
“What happened here?” he asks.
The Destroyers laugh. “This place is Fire,” one of them possibly tells him. “It’s folly to distinguish event from content. There is no isolated incident. This is an inherent characteristic.”
“It just burns, all the time?”
“We encourage it.”
Indeed they do. Clay now sees teams of Destroyers at work on the far side of a hummock of ash. The burned area terminates there, but they are increasing i
t with much the same sort of diligence they showed in extending the ice. Again it is a task performed in several phases. The advance parties go forward into the lush, steaming jungle and interrupt the life-processes of the vegetation with short bursts of hostile attitudes. Secondary marauders follow close behind, sucking all sap and other moisture from the dead trees and shrubs by energetic reversals of the elan vital. This creates a hovering mist of disembodied floral juices that lingers a few moments, finally being drawn off by a humidity-gradient deeper in the forest; the temptation to rush from wet to dry is irresistible. Once this fog has gone, the actual pyrogenesis begins. Expert ignifactors walk among the readied tinder. They are in the pyrophoric state: sparks flicker in their crackling gray fur, and electric halos surround them with glowing gaseous envelopes. The sparks fly across the parched gap; the trees take fire; the red blossom reigns. The hot wind blows outward, driving the small animals of the ruined jungle before it. Clay is awed by the efficiency of the process.
“What is your ultimate goal?” he asks.
“To enlarge Fire to planetary size.”
“But surely this conflicts with your program for adding to the territory of Ice.”
“It does,” the Destroyers readily admit.
“How do you reconcile this conflict?”
“Fire grows toward Ice, Ice toward Fire. When the two meet, we will consider a revision of our policies.”
“And in the meanwhile you’ll bring as much of the world as possible into one zone or the other.”
“Your grasp of the situation is excellent,” they tell him.
They prod him forward, past the region of cooled ash, into a part of the jungle where the flame has touched within the last few days. His calloused soles nevertheless are aware of the warmth underfoot. The vestiges of mud that still coat his skin acquire an overlayer of soot. His fingers, lubricated by helpful particles of carbon, slide freely against one another. He feels the fierce blast from the newly incinerated sector. Luscious tongues of flame spurt from the kindled ground. Huge blazing limbs occasionally break free and, shrouded in red, topple from the jungle roof, landing with gaudy splashes of squandered energy. The faces of his escorts glaze with pleasure. Clay watches them warily, looking for an opportunity to escape. But they lead him ever deeper into Fire. Now he is unable to perceive anything that has not been burned. He hears the song of flowing air as it glides in to fill new vacuums. He sees mounds of charredness on every side. There is a great pit here, hundreds of yards across, its slopes hairy with black slag and its bottom a fathomless crater: plainly this must be the mouth of hell. Will they hurl him in? He stands with them on the lip of the pit. Figures move far below, trekking resolutely along the crater’s wall; they are blackened, irremediably sooty, and it is impossible for him to tell what species they belong to, other than the species of the damned; there must be at least a thousand of them, each by himself, following a narrow track through the sulfurous abyss. Clay pauses, bracing himself, hoping to be able to dart away before the two Destroyers can seize him and thrust him in. But they appear to have forgotten about him. Carefully, like tired mountaineers descending, they pick their way over the side of the pit, and walking sideways, placing one foot below the other, they begin to go down. Standing on the rim under a glaring red sky, he watches their descent. Soon they are no bigger than dogs, and bits of charcoal cling to their sleek fur. They move serenely, never losing their footing, their powerful, agile bodies always poised and perfectly balanced. Now they are lost to view as a gust of gray smoke bursts from the crater wall; when he detects them again, they are very much deeper in the pit, almost to the level of those who shuffle on the lower tracks, and their bodies are thick with cinder. The odor of singed fur reaches him. There is a rumbling in the earth. A wan flame gleams overhead. Where are the Destroyers? Those two dirty monkeys, slogging through the ash down there? Those carbonized squirrels? He no longer knows which they are; they have taken up their orbits among the others and are lost in the crowd. Puffs of heavy smoke conceal them. The crater roils and exhales noxiousness.
He is alone.
He staggers away from the pit and stumbles through a charred field of stiff weeds and thistles and tufted nettle-bunches. The day is ending, and soon the only light is the faint, foul one of the smoking embers. Trees crash in the distance. Enormous boughs land with the soft sighing impact of wood that has burned from the inside out: dream-branches, dream-light. His feet crunch the cinders, which set up a mournful metallic twanging. The universe is cocooned in black haze. He has been transported to the shell of a dead star; he slogs through a cremated wilderness. Where is music, now? Where is beauty? Where is grace? Where is brightness? This forlorn fire-world corrodes his soul and burdens his body with black particles of ash. A scratchy glow, somber and coppery, pokes at his eyes. He tries not to breathe. The breeze changes and blows heat at him. Here the ash is a thick, soft black powder that leaps up in choking puffs. A savage gloom prevails. All the wondrous multicolored splendor of his days with the Skimmers seems only a fable now, an arcadian echo quickly disappearing in this place of scorchedness. The flames surge! The trees crackle! He runs this way and that, driven by some fearful drum that thumps against the fabric of the sooty sky. Out! Out! Out! Out!
It is cooler and cleaner here.
The fire must not have been here lately. He feels a certain peace as he passes into this purer zone. Looking back, he sees Gehenna over his shoulder; all the sky is reddened now, and a funnel of flame pours starward. Against this ghastly light the skeleton of the forest maintains its blackness, but trees lean, vines dangle, panicky figures dart to and fro under the raging flames. Clay turns away from the scene. He goes forward until he hears the sound of running water. What disturbing powers does this brook have? He scarcely cares. He must rid himself of filth. Trustingly he commits himself to the water, wading out until he can crouch and be covered to the neck. The water is cool; it comes from some pleasanter place. He scrubs his skin, uprooting mud and ash. He ducks his head and scrapes his gritty eyelids clean. He tugs at his hair to loosen all that clings to it. At last he emerges, refreshed. The water does not seem to have changed him, except that his skin now gleams, lighting his path for him. He walks on. He prays that he has escaped from the Destroyers at last.
20
This place, he suspects, is called Heavy. It must be one more of the districts of discomfort. He has been in it since shortly after dawn. He finds it among the worst of his trials.
There was no warning where it began, no sudden transition, no sense of crossing a boundary. The effect is something that gathered slowly, mounting with each step, oppressing him only a little at first, then more, then much more. Now he finds himself under the full stress of the place. It is a region of thick-stemmed gray shrubs, broad-leaved and low. A cold mist hovers. The general mood is a colorless one here: hue has bled away. And there is the awful pull coming from the ground, that clamp of gravity hanging with inexorable force to every part of him. How much of this can he endure? His balls are drawn so powerfully downward that he thinks of walking with bent knees. His eyelids are leaden. His cheeks sag. His gut droops. His throat is a loosely hanging sac. His bones bend against the strain. What does he weigh here? Eight hundred pounds? Eight thousand? Eight million? Heavy. Heavy. Heavy.
His weight nails his feet flat to the ground. Each time he pulls one up to step forward, he hears the boing of reverberation as the recoiling planet plops away. He is aware of the arterial blood lying dark and sleepy along the enfeebled catenaries of his chest. He feels a monstrous iron hump riding his shoulders. Yet he walks on. There must be an end to this place.
There is no end.
Halting, he kneels, simply to get his breath, and tears of relief burst forth as some of the stress is lifted from his body’s framework. Like drops of quicksilver the slow tears roll on his cheeks and thump into the ground. He will go back, he decides. He will retrace his steps and seek another route.
He attempts to rise.
On the fifth try he does it, rocking himself and levering up on his knuckles, rump in air, intestines yanked groundward, spine popping, neck creaking, up, up, another push: he stands. He gasps. He walks. Finding the path he had used is no difficult task, for there are his footprints, nearly an inch deep on the soft sandy soil. He puts toes to previous heels and walks. But the gravitational drag does not lessen as he retreats from Heavy’s center. Quite the contrary: it continues to increase. He estimates that he is halfway back to the beginning of this place, now; even so, he does not experience a gradual stepdown of the force as he hauls himself through the region of the gradual stepup. Mere reversal of direction gains him nothing. Breathing becomes a battle. His rib cage will not lift except under duress; his lungs are stretched like rubber bands. His cheeks hang toward his clavicles. There is a boulder in his throat. A dry, peripheral voice intones, The intensity of the pull is a function of the duration of your exposure to it, and not of your proximity to the center of the attractive body. “Attractive body?” he asks dimly. “What body? Whose body?” But he plays the words back in his mind and understands. The laws of physics make no provision for such phenomena. But he knows that if he remains here much longer, he will be squeezed flat. He will become a film of molecules coating the ground like November frost. He must get away.
It is much worse.
He can no longer remain upright. He has become top-heavy, and the mass of his skull bows his back; his vertebrae slide about, grinding and creaking. He must crawl. He resists the temptation to lie flat and surrender to the awful force.
The sky is being pulled down on top of him. A gray shield lies on his back. His knees are taking root. He crawls. He crawls. He crawls. He crawls.
“Hanmer, help me!” he cries.
His words are leaden. They spill from his mouth and plummet into the ground.
“Ninameen! Ti! Serifice! Someone!”