Microcosmic God (36 page)

The next time he pushed the groggy clouds from him, he felt much better. He was changed; he knew that. He was basically changed; he felt different about things. It took him quite a while to figure out just how, but then it occurred to him that though he was still surrounded with the monsters and visions and phantoms of his own drink-crazed creation, he did not fear them. But it was more than that. It was not the disinterest he had experienced out there when he was adrift. It was a sullen hatred of the things. It was an eagerness to have one of them come near enough for him to attack. He crouched by the spring and looked craftily about him, trying to find an object to kill and tear.
He found it. Near him was a coconut. He picked up a stone and hurled it, and cracked the coconut. He caught it up and drank greedily from the streaming cracks, and then broke it and ate the meat until it made him sick. He was enormously pleased with himself.

All around him the ground pimpled and dimpled, and from the little depressions what he thought were strange plants began to grow. They were sinuous stalks, and they seemed to be made of two rubbery sheaths that wound about each other spirally, forming a tentaclelike stem, and spreading out at the tip in two flashy extensions like snail’s eyes. He reached out and touched one as it grew visibly, and it writhed away from him and began clubbing the ground blindly, searchingly. He’d never dreamed up anything like this before. But he was certain he had nothing to fear from them. He got up, kicking one out of the way disgustedly, and began to climb the central hill for bearings. Just as he left, one of the growths spurted up out of the ground, curved over his head and smashed wetly down on the spot he had just vacated. He didn’t even look over his shoulder. Why should he, for a figment of his imagination? The mistake he made was that the things were real. Just as real, my friend, as you and I!

Barry, poor crazed wreck, couldn’t realize it then, because the growing, writhing trunks all around him were mixed and mingled with things of his own creation, dancing and gibbering around him. There were things harmless and beautiful, and things too foul to mention, and it is little wonder that the stemlike things were of little importance.

Barry went on up the hill. He picked up a thorny stick, quite heavy, and strode on, casually swiping at the monsters, real and imaginary. He noticed subconsciously that when he struck at a unicorn or a winged frog, it would vanish immediately, but when he swung at a growing tentacle it would either duck quickly or, when struck, twist into a tight knot about its wound. He even looked back and noticed how the stalks kept pace with him, sinking back into the ground behind him and sprouting ahead. It still meant nothing to him.

A few hundred yards from the top he stopped and sniffed. There had been a growing, fetid odor about the place, and he didn’t like
it. He connected it somehow with the smell of the ichor that exuded from the wounded stalks after he had slashed them, but he was incurious; he didn’t really care. He shrugged and finished his climb.

When he had reached the top he stood a moment wiping his forehead with his wrist, and then sighted all around the horizon. There were no other islands in sight. This one was small—nearly round, and perhaps a mile by a mile and a quarter. He spotted two more springs and a tight grove of coconut and breadfruit. That was encouraging. He stepped forward as a rubbery trunk poured out of the ground and lashed at his legs with its two prehensile tentacles. It missed.

A puff of wind bearing an unspeakable odor brought his attention back to the crest of the hill. It was nearly round, almost exactly following the contours of the island, and fell in the center to form a small crater. Down at the bottom of the crater was a perfectly round hole, and that was the source of the noisome smell.

Barry walked down toward it because he happened to be facing that way and it was the easiest way to go. He was halfway down the slope when two points of what looked like pulpy flesh began to rise out of the hole. They seemed to be moving slowly, but Barry suddenly realized that it was an illusion due to their enormous size. Before he could bring himself to stop, they had risen twenty feet in the air. They began leaning outward, one directly toward him, the other across the hole, away from him. They grew thicker as they poured upward and outward, and finally they lay flat on the slope and the near one began licking up toward him.

It was the most frightening phantasm that had yet presented itself to Barry’s poor alcoholic brain, but now he would not be frightened. He stood there, legs apart, club at the ready, and waited. When the thing reached his feet he raised himself on his toes and brought the thorny club down with all his strength on its fleshy tip. It winced away and then poured back. He hit it twice more and it retreated. He ran after it and smashed it again and again. It suddenly rocketed up in the air, as did its mate from the other side of the crater. They struck together with a mighty wet
smack!
and stood there, a pale-green, shining column of living flesh, quivering in the sunlight. And
then, with unbelievable speed, they plunged into the ground, back into their hole. Barry dropped his club, clasped his hands over his head and smirked. Then he turned and went back to his spring.

And all the way back, not another trunk showed itself.

He slept well that night under a crude shelter of palm leaves. Not a thing bothered him but dreams, and of course they didn’t bother him much any more. His victory over the thing in the crater had planted a tiny seed of self-esteem in that rotten hulk of a man. That, added to the fact that he was too crazy to be afraid of anything, made him something new under the sun.

In the morning he sat up abruptly. At his feet was a pile of breadfruit and coconuts, and around him was a forest, a wall of the waving stalks. He leaped to his feet and cast about wildly for his club. It had disappeared. He drew his sheath knife, which by some miracle had stayed with him since he left the
Jesse Hanck
, and stood there, palisaded by the thickly planted, living stems. And he still was not afraid. He took a deep breath and stepped menacingly toward the near wall of stalks. They melted into the ground before he reached them. He whirled and rushed those behind him. They were gone before he could get within striking distance. He paused and nodded to himself. If that was the way they wanted it, it was O.K. He put away his knife and fell to on the fruit. The stems ranked themselves at a respectful distance, as if they were watching. And then he noticed something new. Deep within his brain was a constant, liquid murmur, as if thousands of people were talking quietly together in a strange tongue. He didn’t mind it very much. He’d been through worse, and he wasn’t curious.

After he was quite finished he noticed a rustling movement in the wall surrounding him. The creatures were passing something, one to the other—his club! It reached the stalk nearest him; it was taken and laid gently by his side. The stalk straightened and dropped into the earth quickly as if it were embarrassed.

Barry looked at the waving things and almost grinned. Then he picked up the club. Immediately the things on one side of him melted into the ground, and those on the other side doubled in number. A
couple of them began sprouting under his feet; he jumped away, startled. More sank into the earth from his path, and more sprang up behind. He looked at them a little uneasily; it occurred to him that they were a little insistent, compared with his usual disappearing monsters. He walked away from them. They followed; that is, they massed behind him, sprouting in his footsteps. And the murmuring in his mind burst into a silent cacophony; gleeful, triumphant.

He wandered inland, followed by his rustling company of pale-green stalks. When he turned aside they would spring up around him, and it was no good trying to press through. They made no attempt to harm him at all. But—they were
forcing
him toward the hill! Perhaps he realized it—perhaps not. Barry, by this time, was totally unhinged. Any other man could not have lived through what he did. But his peculiar conditioning, the subtle distortion of his broken mind, gave him the accidental ability to preserve himself. Certainly he himself could take no credit for it. His fantastic world was no more strange to him than ours is to us. If you or I were suddenly transported to that island, we would be as frightened as—well, a gorilla in Times Square, or a New Yorker in an African jungle. It’s all a matter of receptivity.

And so he found himself marching up the central slope being driven gently but firmly toward that monstrous thing in the crater by his entourage of pale-green stalks. They must have been a weird-looking company.

And the thing was waiting for him. He came up over the crest of the rise, and the tip of one of the two great green projections curled up over his head and lashed down at him. He threw himself sideways and belted it with his club as it touched the ground. It slid back toward the hole. He took a step or two after it. It was huge—fully sixty feet of it stretched from him to the hole in the center of the crater. And no telling how much more of it was in there. At the first movement from the thing, there had been a rustle behind him and every one of the stalks had dropped from sight.

As Barry ran forward to strike again, a shape shot up out of the ground at his side, whipped around his leg and flung him down. He
rolled over and sat up, to see the other great green arm come swooping down on the stalk that had tripped him and—saved his life. The two huge tentacles slapped together, twisted the slender stalk between them, and began to pull. The stalk tried to go underground, and for a moment held, while its spiraled body stretched and thinned under tons of pull. Then the ground itself gave, and with a peculiar sucking sound, the stalk came up out of the earth. And for the first time Barry saw it for what it was.

The “root” was a dark-green ovoid, five or six feet long, about two and a half feet thick at the middle. It was rough and wrinkled, and gleamed with its coating of slime. The stalk itself was nearly eight feet long. The creature hung for a moment in the twin tentacles of its captor, and then it was enfolded, the bulge of it sliding visibly down the two arms which had closed together and twisted, forming a great proboscislike tube. And Barry heard it scream, deep down in his mind.

Barry rose and scrambled back over the crest of the hill. It had occurred to him that the monster in the crater had struck at a victim—himself—and that the stalk had sacrificed itself to save him. Having a victim, it would be satisfied for the time being. He was right. Peering back, he saw the great column rise in the air and slip swiftly back into its hole. And he realized something else, as the two tips disappeared underground. The divided proboscis—the ability to rise from and sink into the earth—why, the big fellow there was exactly the same as all the rest of these creatures, except for its huge size!

What was it? Why, Barry never knew exactly, and though I took a great deal of trouble to find out, I never bothered to tell him. There they were; more than that, Barry did not care. He still doesn’t. However, as closely as I can discover, I think that the creatures were a species of marine worm—one of the
Echiuroidea
, to be exact—
bonellia viridis
. They grow large anywhere they grow, but I’ve never heard of one longer than four feet, proboscis and all. However, I think it quite possible for a colony to develop in a given locality, and mutate into greater size. As for the big one—well, Barry did find a thing or two out about that monster.

Barry went back down the hill and headed for cover. He wanted
to sit somewhere in the shade where he would not be bothered by such things. He found himself a spot and relaxed there. And slowly, then faster and faster, the stalks began to spring up around him again. They kept their distance, almost respectfully; but there was a certain bland insistence in their presence that annoyed Barry.

“Go away!” he said sharply.

And they did. Barry was utterly astonished. It was the first really human reaction that had struck him in weeks. But the sight of these curious creatures, so dissimilar to anything that he had ever heard about, obeying him so implicitly, struck some long-buried streak of humor in the man. He roared with laughter.

“Hello.”

His laughter cut off and he peered around. Nothing.

“Hello.” The sound seemed to come from no specific direction—as a matter of fact, it seemed to come from no direction at all. It seemed to come from inside him, but he hadn’t spoken.

“Who said that?” he snapped.

“I did,” said the voice. He looked around again, and his eyes caught a movement down low, to his left. There, just peeping out of the ground, were the twin tendrils that tipped the ubiquitous stalks.

“You?”
asked Barry, pointing.

The creature rose another two feet and swayed gently. “Yes.”

“And what the hell might you be?”

“I don’t understand you. What is hell?”

“It speaks English!” gasped Barry.

“I speak,” agreed the monster. “What is English?”

Barry rose to his knees and stared at it. “What are you?” he repeated.

“Man.”

“Yeah? What does that make me?”

“You are different. I have only your words for everything. Your name for yourself is Man. My name for myself is Man, too. I have no name for you.”

“I’m a man,” asserted Barry, half truthfully.

“And what would you say I am?”

Barry looked at it carefully. “A damned nightmare.”

The thing said seriously, “Very well. Hereafter we shall be known as nightmares. I shall tell all the people.”

The thought of actually having a conservation with this unpleasant-looking beast struck Barry again and almost overwhelmed him. “How the devil can you speak with me?”

“My mind speaks to your mind.”

“Yeah! Gee!” was the only comment Barry could think of.

“What are you going to do?” asked the creature.

“Whatcha mean?”

“You have proved yourself against the Big One. We know you can destroy him. Will you do it soon, please?”