On A Pale Horse (25 page)

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 Mobius strip with a cross section of a prism, so I had to traverse the loop three times. But why Seven?”

“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 livewood 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.”

Zane was shaken by her revelation. He had not realized before how directly and specifically she could affect him, or how he could affect her. His own power had surprised him as much as hers. But he got himself organized and returned to the subject. “So you summoned me here to tell me something and show me something, putting difficulties in my way. What is really on your mind?”

She shrugged again, seeming to like the motion. She had recovered her composure. She was, of course, an exceedingly tough creature. “You have met the others.”

“I presume you mean the other special figures—Time, Fate, War. Yes, briefly.”

“We really are special, Thanatos, we mortal immortals. We differ from one another, but we interact in devious yet essential ways, exerting our vectors.”

“Vectors?”

“Well, you don't suppose any of us are completely free, do you? We don't do what we do frivolously. Just as the vectors offered, elevation, wind, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and landscape interact to determine exactly where a thrown ball will fall, so do the relevant factors determine how a war shall proceed, or how a cold front shall move, or when a given life will end. It may seem like chance or caprice, but that is only because no mortal person and few immortal entities comprehend the nature of the operative forces. We are not free—no one is absolutely free—yet we do have some leeway, and in this we individualize our offices. Each Incarnation can counter another to a limited degree, if that other permits, but we prefer not to do that unless there is sufficient reason.”

Zane was curious. “How can Death be countered, even if Death permits?”

“Fate could arrange for a replacement, cutting off a thread.”

Now he felt a chill, for he knew this had been done before. “Fate—why should Fate ever want to do that?”

“Chronos could halt the approach of an appointment.”

“Yes, but why—”

“Mars could fashion a social disruption that could change the entire picture.”

She was avoiding his question. Still, this seemed worth pursuing. “And what of Nature? What cute little trick do you have up your fog, aside from the doubtlessly convenient ability to inflict instant lust?”

“Show me your soul,” she said.

“My—!” Then he made the connection, and brought out the soul of the left-footed dancing girl. He had stuffed his soul-bag automatically in his pocket and forgotten it until this moment.

Nature wafted a ball of mist at the soul. “Do not misjudge the power of any Incarnation, Thanatos. When you leave me, go to the crypt and try this soul. Then you will comprehend.”

Zane put the soul away. It seemed unchanged. Was she bluffing? What could she really do with a soul? “You brought me here only for this?”

She laughed, causing little puffs of mist to spin off and float free. “By no means. I merely make my point with that soul so you learn proper respect and pay attention to my implication.”

“Well, make your implication!” Zane exclaimed impatiently.

“What do you suppose is the most ancient profession of the human species?” Nature asked.

What was this distaff dog up to now? “It's a female profession,” he said guardedly.

“Not so, Thanatos. Females were not permitted. The oldest profession is that of shaman, or medicine man, or witch doctor.”

“Witch doctor!” Zane exclaimed incredulously. “What validity did he have before modern magic was mastered?” But as he spoke, he remembered Molly Malone's comment about the old cave painters and their lost powers over the souls of animals. The practice of magic did predate modern advances.

“The shaman was the original liberal arts supporter. The chief of the tribe was the man of action, while the shaman was the man of intellect. It may not have been easy for him in primitive times, when neither magic nor science worked better than erratically, but he was the one with the true vision of the future. From him descended those who had to fathom why, instead of merely accepting what. Doctors, philosophers, priests, scientists, magicians, artists, musicians—”

“All those who cater in some fashion to Nature,” Zane agreed, though privately he wondered whether artists and musicians really belonged in that category. Their professions were more subjective than most. “But your point—”

“There is a way.”

“A way for what? I don't follow you at all!”

“Are you an evolutionist or a creationist?”

“Both, of course! But what does that have to do with anything?”

“There are those who feel there is a conflict.”

She was changing the subject again, in that infuriating way of hers. “I see no conflict. God created the cosmos in a week, and Satan caused it to evolve. Thus we have magic and science together, as is proper. How could it be otherwise? But what did you intend to say to me? I do have other business.”

“We do fear the unknown,” Nature said. “Thus man seeks to explain things, to illuminate what remains dark. Yet he remains fascinated by mystery and chance and oft times gambles his very life away.” She glanced smokily at him, and Zane was sure that she, along with all the other Incarnations, knew how he had gambled with money and then with his own life. “Man is the curious creature, and if his curiosity can kill him, it also educates him. Today we have both nuclear physics and specific conjuration of demons.”