On a Pale Horse (26 page)

“I’ll tame you, you perverse inanimate thing,” he grunted. He threw a leg over it so he could free a hand. In a moment he had it wedged between his thighs, captive—but such was its power, it lifted him right off the ground. He had to hang on to its thick neck with both hands. The thing was also getting hotter now, and was pulsing internally, as if its effort were making it react.

The bottle drifted toward the bog, carrying him along. “Whoa!” he cried.

The bottle stopped in place.

It was like a saddle, and it answered to horse-commands! “Now I think I understand,” Zane said. “Bottle, carry me across the bog to the citadel of Nature.”

The red bottle accelerated. Zane hung on, his legs dangling. The thing was comfortable enough, for the water inside it allowed it to shape to his body, but by the same token, it offered no firm support. He clung as it zoomed, and he eyed the bubbling bog so close below; yet he was making decent progress and would soon be across.

Suddenly Zane found himself overtaking a boy. The youth was flapping his arms violently as if to fly—and indeed, his feet dangled like Zane’s, just above the hungry bog. It was the hard way to do it, for man really was not structured to fly alone, and Zane resolved to stay out of the way of those flailing extremities. He leaned back, causing his bottle to tilt, and it followed its mouth upward. Once he passed over the bare-armed flier, he could drop back to—

Z-O-O-O-M! An airplane cruised low overhead, almost blowing Zane off his precarious perch. He struggled to hang on to the bottle, lest he be dropped on the flying youth just below and dunk them both in the boiling muck. What sort of imbecile would fly his airplane so low over other travelers? Or was it simply cruel mischief? The arrogance of power?

Zane finally re-established himself and flew on across the bog. The flapping flier seemed not to have noticed the near collision he had participated in, but went his own way without even a salutation. Zane did not think much of him either. This region seemed to be full of tunnel-visioned nuts!

Now he came to the other side of the bog. The hot-water bottle cooled, dropped down, and deposited him on the bank, refusing to respond to further directions. Either its magic was exhausted, or it was programmed to go no farther. Zane got off it, and the bottle went completely limp.

Well, he was past the morass and could walk now. He saw there was a path through the forest. He carried the bottle to the shed he spied and hung it up on its hook. This was a simple vehicle to park!

He set off down the path toward the citadel. The trees closed in more tightly than before, and the route was curvaceous. Zane rather enjoyed this portion of the trip; the woods were, as the poet Frost had put it, lovely, dark, and deep. A person seldom got to appreciate just how lovely a forest was, for people spent most of their lives rushing to accomplish what they supposed were more important tasks than appreciating nature.

Then the path debouched at a clear, small lake. Zane did not care to get his robe wet, so he tried to go around the water—but soon discovered that the land on either side devolved rapidly into more marsh. He had to go across the lake, which meant he had to swim.

Swim? Zane snapped his fingers, outraged at his own foolishness. He could walk on water! He had done so when rescuing the drowning man from the ocean. His Deathshoes gave him that power. He had been wasting time, trying to detour unnecessarily!

He strode out onto the water—and his feet sank through it into the slush beneath. Zane windmilled his arms, catching his balance, then hastily backed out. What was the matter?

In a moment he figured it out. This was not ordinary water; this was one of Nature’s defenses. Nature was another Incarnation; her power matched his. The minor magic of clothing would not be effective against her spells. So here his shoes were not magic—or at least were not potent enough to prevail against her counterspell. He would, after all, have to swim.

He considered removing his clothing, but realized that it would be difficult to carry cloak, gloves, and shoes; the
stuff would probably get soaked, anyway. So he would try swimming in his outfit, and if it hampered him too much, he would remove it. Without further ado, he waded in.

He discovered to his surprise and gratification that his uniform protected him from direct immersion. He was in the water, but it did not penetrate to his skin. There seemed to be a spell to keep the water out, though it pressed the material of the robe closely about his limbs. He tried to swim—and found himself buoyed, so that it was easy to float. He moved through the water with satisfactory dispatch. This was fun, too, in its fashion.

It was, however, also hard work. Zane had not swum any distance in years, and soon his muscles were tiring from the unaccustomed exertion. He slowed, unworried; he really did not need to race. He would get there—

A canoe came suddenly alongside him, crowding close. Zane missed his stroke and took a gulp of water. Then he righted himself, shook his head, and saw that a magic motorboat was rushing silently by, shoving up a wave that pushed the canoe into the swimmer.

In a moment the motorboat was gone, its pilot oblivious to the damage done by his arrogance. The canoeist paddled on his own course, similarly indifferent. Zane was left spluttering in the water. What was the matter with these people?

He swam on to the shore and drew himself out. His uniform emerged dry; even his feet were comfortable. The footpath resumed ahead of him. He followed it and soon was at Nature’s citadel.

Actually, it now seemed more like a temple, strange as it was. A dense growth of trees and vines formed an almost solid enclosure with interwoven arches and embrasures of living wood that rose to a leafy crown. From the twining vines, flowers sprouted, sending their perfumes out wantonly.

Zane marched up to the door aperture. There was no bell or knocker, so he proceeded on in unannounced.

It was like a cathedral inside, with lush plant growth everywhere. Living arches of wood supported deep green
carpets of ferns. Water trickled down from mossy springs. Everywhere was life, green and pleasant.

He came to a sunny central court where wafts of mist curtained a throne fashioned of deep green jadeite. This was Nature’s throne room.

“Welcome, Thanatos,” her wind-and-bird-song voice came. “Do you wonder at the challenge?”

“Yes,” Zane agreed shortly. He wasn’t sure he liked her using the Greek name for Death. “If you wanted to see me, you might at least have facilitated my approach.”

“Oh, but I did facilitate it, Thanatos!” she protested, coming to meet him. A patch of mist moved with her; it was, in fact, her clothing, artfully thinning and thickening at key points. Zane found the effect intriguing, though he was sure Nature was no young creature. Mist might be mostly opaque, but it couldn’t be solid.

“In what manner?”

“I set up a pathway that only one of us could negotiate,” she explained. “Normally there is no path at all, and no outside creature penetrates. This path would bar either a fully mortal creature or a fully immortal one, such as a minion of Eternity. Therefore our privacy is assured.”

“That’s what I thought at first—but there were other people all around,” Zane said. “Morons on land, water, and in the air. Three times I was almost in a collision.”

“Were you really?” she asked, unsurprised.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know, Green Mother!”

Nature smiled as if complimented. Her face was pretty enough, framed by somewhat wild and flowing hair as green as grass and blue as water, the colors shifting in a kind of pseudo-iridescence. Her eyes, when she met his gaze, were like chill, deep pools with highlights of fire. He had seen black opals like that. This woman, he realized, had awesome power; indeed she was not to be trifled with! “I know that only you traveled that route, Thanatos.”

“What of the others, then? Did I imagine them?”

She made a smiling sigh, her misted and ample bosom contracting like a dissipating cloud. “I see you do not yet comprehend my little ways. Those others were you.”

“I doubt it. I wanted no part of such interference.”

“Be seated, Thanatos,” she said, patting a curlicue of rattan with a hand that sparkled of nacreous shell. All things animate were hers, Zane realized, including pearls, the product of living creatures. “I shall clarify this particular detail so that we may proceed to our proper business.”

Zane sat, for the Green Mother’s command was not to be denied. The rattan seemed to shape itself to his body in an almost embarrassing familiarity, making him quite uncomfortable. “Do that.”

“A person is often his own enemy, if he but knows it. It is the nature of the beast. Well I know.”

Naturally Nature knew the nature of man! That was her business. But how did this relate to his obstacle-course entry path?

“Once you drove a vehicle,” she said. “Once you rode a device. Once you moved alone. You were one, and you were three. Only the scenery changed, to facilitate objectivity.”

“I was in three encounters,” Zane agreed. This female gave a disturbing impression of comprehension, but he did not see what she was getting at.

“You
were
three. One encounter, three views. You saw yourself from three vantages. Three chances to react to yourself.”

“I was three?” Zane asked, perplexed.

“There was no one but you on that route. But time was in a manner flexed.” She smiled obscurely, her teeth gleaming momentarily like fangs.
Nature, red in tooth and claw
 … “Chronos owed me a favor. I could not flex the event myself. We Incarnations do assist each other.”

“No one but me?” Zane’s head seemed to be spinning. “One encounter, seen three ways? You are saying I was the driver—and the cyclist—and the pedestrian—only when I was the cyclist I saw it as the hot-water bottle ride, and when I was the pedestrian I saw it as the swimming? You changed the view so I wouldn’t catch on? I got in my own way three times?”

“You comprehend rapidly and well, once you get into it,” Nature agreed, and her compliment pleased him despite his underlying anger.

“I comprehend that you put me on a track through a Möbius strip with a cross section of a prism, so I had to traverse the loop three times. But
why
?”

“We answered that before. A mortal could not have passed; the equipment is not spelled to work for mortals. An immortal could not have passed either; an angel would not have needed the equipment, and the true path exists only for that equipment. A demon would have fought himself to death at the first encounter, for that is the way of demons.”

“I felt like fighting,” Zane admitted. “That arrogant idiot in the power boat—” He grinned ruefully. “Who was me. It seemed so different in the car! I thought I owned the road and that the others were intruding on my surface. As a walker or swimmer, I wasn’t paying attention to anything except getting myself along. As a cyclist or bottlist or whatever, I was caught in the middle, between the arrogant power driver and the ignorant self-mover. Both seemed wrong. I’m
not
proud of my performance, in retrospect.”

Nature shrugged, making an interesting ripple in the mist about her. At times she seemed fat, but at other times she seemed voluptuous; the fog never quite betrayed the truth. “You will have leisure to ponder the implications. You did get through, as only a true Incarnation would, blundering as it may have appeared. We Incarnations are not quite living and not quite dead; we are a unique category, with unique powers. We occupy our offices, but sometimes we
are
our offices. Like light, we are both wave and particle.” She gestured, dismissing the matter. “Now we have privacy.”

“Wait,” Zane said, remembering something. “How can a demon fight himself to death? He’s already dead.”

“It may be true that the dead can not die—but if you do to a demon’s corporate body what would kill a living creature, that demon loses the use of that body and must return directly to Hell. So it is much the same, in practice.”

Zane returned to another matter. “What’s so important about privacy? Do we have secrets to exchange?”

“Indeed we do. We are the mortal immortals; we can’t
have our secrets known to mortal mortals, lest we lose respect. We can’t tell all to the Eternals, lest we lose our power.”

“What secrets?” Zane asked. “I’m just doing my job.”

“As you perceive it.”

“Is there something I don’t know about it?”

“Perhaps.” She settled into a live wood chair, her ambience of mist spreading to fog much of it out. “I can make a small and not entirely comfortable demonstration.”

She gestured, and suddenly Zane felt a tremendous concupiscence. He wanted sex, and he wanted it now. He found himself standing, in more than one manner, and approaching her.

“No!” he gritted, knowing this was not his own desire, but one imposed from without. Nature only smiled.

He reached for her—but forced himself to grasp for her soul, not her body. His gloved hand passed through the mist and her flesh, and his fingers hooked into her soul. He drew on it, stretching part of it out of her body.

She stiffened as if in sudden pain. Then Zane’s erotic feeling left him as quickly as it had come. Her spell was off. He relaxed his hold on her soul and withdrew his hand from her flesh.

Nature took a deep and somewhat shuddering breath, and the mist about her fluctuated in intensity. She had lost some of her composure. “I have shown you part of my power,” she gasped. “And you have shown me part of yours.”

Again Zane suffered an illumination. “I
do
have power over the living—to a degree!” He remembered how his client in the hospital, the old woman like his mother, had reacted when he had tried the first time to take her soul. It had to be a terrible shock to have the soul pulled from a living body.

“You do indeed, Thanatos. No one can balk an Incarnation in his specialty—not even another Incarnation. There is no profit in opposing each other, ever. Nature governs all of life—but she doesn’t govern Death. The individual powers each of us has are inviolate. No one—”
Here she paused, giving him a straight glance of enigmatic significance, her eyes like the swirlings of a tempest at night. “
No one
can interfere with any one of us with impunity.”