Izzy And The Father Of Terror

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

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Eliot Fintushel: Izzy and the Father of Terror

First appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 1997.

Nominated for Best Novella.

He who feels punctured

Must once have been a bubble.

–Lao Tze (trans. Witter Bynner)

ONE

1. A Hole in My Mind

I was thumbing through New Mexico with nothing, headed

nowhere, when I fell in with a shaman named Shaman who

pricked a hole in my mind. A little prick it was, but everything

gushed in through it, and everything spilled out. Suddenly, I

could not tell the difference between myself and others or

between my body and the rest of the world.

"Don’t be afraid, Mel," Shaman said. I was very afraid. We

were sitting inside a long canvas tent, the communal kitchen of

the Space People. All the other Space People were asleep.

Read these

Nebula-

nominated

stories

From Asimov's

Echea, by

Kristine

Kathryn Rusch

Fortune and

Misfortune, by

Lisa Goldstein

Izzy and the

Father of

Terror, by

Eliot Fintushel

Lethe, by

Walter Jon

Williams

Standing

Room Only,

by Karen Joy

Fowler

Winter Fire,

by Geoffrey A.

Landis

From Analog

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

They had picked me up outside of Albuquerque and driven me

out onto the desert to their little spread. Because Shaman

liked me, they had picked me up. Even though there were

Chicanos in those days who hated hippies, who conned their

way into communes and shot them up, and I am as dark-

skinned and small as a Mexican, they had picked me up.

It was dark in the tent. Flaps open, stars filled the big triangles

at either end; feeble candlelight unsealed the night between

us, loud with cicadas and dead souls crying. There was a

votive candle in a shot glass on the dirt floor. Rococo shadows

angled and sprawled across chairs, long table, canvas, and

ourselves.

"You’ve broken me." The words jumped where my bones

should be. Something in me arched and bristled like a

frightened cat. Were the words mine?

Shaman took them for mine. "I’m you," he said.

Incomprehensible. "Relax."

I left that place. I left the Space People sleeping. I left Shaman

with his kit of tropes that killed or cured or pricked your mind

and left you to bleed to death or to drown in the world’s blood,

bleeding into you through a tiny hole. The last thing I saw

there was the candle flame reflected in Shaman’s eyes, two

little flames dwindling as I stumbled out into the desert, out

into stars and the cries of cicadas and dead souls, which might

have been my tongue, my voice, my limbs, or my self, since

Shaman had pricked a hole in my mind.

2. Talk with a Joshua Tree

I had a talk in the dark with a Joshua tree. I said, "Everything’s

okay. I have a mother in New York. I have brothers and a

sister. My father left us, but he’s still in my mind. In there, I can

see the faces of all the people in my life, I know the names of

everything, and no one on Earth would disbelieve me." The

Joshua tree was unconvinced. I couldn’t remember my

mother’s face. I stood there, out of sight of any highway, lost to

the Space People, stars in my skin. Someone had just spoken.

It might have been the Joshua tree. It might have been the

sand.

Aurora in Four

Voices, by

Catherine

Asaro

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"Izzy and the

Father of

Terror" by Eliot

Fintushel,

1997 by Eliot

Fintushel, used

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

3. Izzy

Finally, tears gushed. I was sitting on a curb by the highway

before dawn. I was dawn, not quite risen over a small, dark

man on a desert highway. I was a pool of tears splash-fed by a

biped above my gutter. I was a tremble, a sob, a cicada, a

dead soul listening in. I don’t know what I was. I was a car

coming, high beam illumining tear-slicked face, driver coming

in earshot of moaning figure, alone in the desert, in the dark.

The car stopped a few yards past me, then purred back. The

passenger door flung open, and a man leaned out, balding,

single-browed, a skinny man with a nasal accent: "Get in,

Jack. We ain’t got all day."

I smelled jasmine, sweet and piercing. Inside, beneath a red

tassel hanging from the rearview, a small soapstone elephant

was lit by the map light above the dash. My tusks curled into

the tangle of threads. I had many arms. In my hands were

medicine bottles, knives, diamonds, skulls, crushed demons,

and snakes. A naked woman scissored me.

I was sitting in Ganesha’s lap. My legs embraced the

elephant’s hips. My heels massaged his buttocks. My nipples

rubbed his chest. I smiled, but held my lips enticingly distant.

The Indian behind the wheel stroked my back.

Or perhaps I was from Pakistan. I was irritated at Izzy. I, the

driver, said, "If I had wanted like this, I would have stayed at

my motel, Izzy. Do we have to pick up everybody?"

"Exactly, Sarvaduhka," One-brow shot back. "That’s who this

piece of merchandise is: everybody! Ain’t you, Jack?"

I pulled my sleeve across my face to erase the tears. The car,

a warm shell of light, seemed heaven, but I couldn’t find where

to say yes from. When I tried to speak, the car door groaned

instead. It closed. I was inside, in front, squeezed between the

door and the man with one long eyebrow. "How did you

know?" I tried to say; instead, the sun rose.

by permission

of the author

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

4. Relic Background Radiation

Sarvaduhka pressed a button, and there was the United

States of America: news, music, tractor pull

ads?"SUNDAYYYYYY!"?static, evangelist patter, a song by

Johnny Abilene . . .

There’s a splash across the southern sky

Named "I love you-oo!"

And I know just what a big man

Ought to do-yodelayhee-do.

I’m sorry I left you somewhere in the blue-boo-hoo-hoo

With your mama singing lullabies to baby-boo . . .

. . . used automobiles, paid political announcements, weather

reports . . .

"Wait a damn minute," Izzy said. "Turn it back to the

Haymakers, Duke. I wanna hear that song."

"Haymakers, Izzy?"

"Gimme that." He pushed Sarvaduhka’s hand away and

manned the radio dial himself. I felt as if someone were

reaming my navel. The smears of sound as the needle

skimmed the tuner scale were gurgles of cud surging up my

throat. Finally he found it. There were the slightly off-key notes

and bad mixing that signal a live performance:

I’m gonna bring you right back some day.

Though you may be far away,

I can always pull a little stunt

That the folks call "epoché"

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

"Epoché?" Sarvaduhka took his eyes off the road?me, a flat,

black triangle long as the desert, wide as the squareback here,

beetling to a point out there, and dotted with my Bott’s dot

vertebrae?to frown at Izzy. "Did the Haymaker say epoché,

Izzy?"

"Shut up! I gotta hear this."

Take a long lost dad’s advice:

Though yore mama’s Guldang nice,

Save a little bit of love for yodelodelayhee-me!

Just then Izzy’s beeper went off. I’d never seen one before. I

don’t think anyone had at that time. But Izzy’s was beeping.

"Not good," he said. He pulled it out of his belt, then held it up

close. "Four degrees Kelvin. Shit. It’s up a whole degree. He’s

actually tried it."

"Tried what?"

"Epoché, for crissakes. What have we been talking about?

salami? Sarvaduhka, who’s President?"

"McCarthy. Why?"

"McCarthy? Still? What color is the American flag?"

"Red, white, and yellow."

"Unchanged. Okay. This wasn’t the big one. He didn’t manage

it. And Mel’s still here beside us. Okay. Good. We got time.

Johnny’s out looking, and we’re in the pink. I’m taking a nap."

"Wait. What is four degrees that was three before?"

"Relic background radiation, Savvy. I never told you this? It’s

like a pilot light. It flares up when somebody does an epoché.

It didn’t work though. I’m taking a nap." Brooking no protest,

Izzy turned off the radio and scooted down in his seat.

"I am driving with a mad man, and still no female action."

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

5. The Temporary

Thoughts smoked from my skin.

"Is he a werewolf, Izzy?" Sarvaduhka whispered.

Izzy said, "Let me snooze."

I squeezed Mel’s eyes shut to keep from slashing too brutally

the delicate inner membrane, with my light. Rising open-armed

before Sarvaduhka’s VW Squareback heading east out of

Albuquerque, I bathed them, squinting in the munificence and

splendor, till Izzy yanked down the visors.

"Snooze, he wants to snooze!" Sarvaduhka said. "Snooze,

Izzy, but when do I get my female action? Everything you want

to do, we do. Now we have the boy and you are satisfied. But I

still have no female action. I never should have left my

videos." He pinched a cone of incense from a slot under the

ashtray, stuffed it into a compartment in Ganesha’s back, and

lit it clumsily with a cheap butane lighter. Smoke spouted from

Ganesha’s trunk.

"You horny bastard," Izzy grumbled, "didn’t I tell you, you get

some nooky in Memphis? We gotta finish with the kid first, but

I’m too tired now. I gotta cop some Z’s, Sergeant Ducky. Can

you clam it?"

I was terrified. A slug in the kill jar?the sting of jasmine like

carbon tetrachloride?I curled away from Izzy’s body, my skin

electric with loathing. He yawned and stretched. His arm

looped across my shoulders. His head lolled against my chin.

The feel of that clammy bald spot. I tried to be the sun, huge,

distant, omnipotent.

Through the hole in my mind images stuttered: Mayan priest

pederasts; surgeons, masked and gloved, their hands in my

bowels; Shaman shaking and shaking his head; the Space

People, the desert, my father?Run! "Please let me out," I said,

one of me.

"Shit!" said Izzy. "I forgot this happens." He stopped the hole

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

with his finger.

How did you do that? He didn’t hear me.

"Savvy, stop the car," said Izzy One-brow. Sarvaduhka

groaned and pulled onto the shoulder. "We get no rest until

he’s cauterized."

I felt as if I were being buried alive. The sudden constriction,

even though it produced a more normal-sized, more workable

mind, was suffocating. Izzy amputated the world. As soon as

the car stopped, he pushed open the door and shoved me out.

He fell out on top of me, wrestled me down. "Sarvaduhka!" he

shouted. "Help me."

"Is this legal?" the Indian said. I heard his door open, then

slam shut. He was pressing me down. I was scrambling and

wheezing after something like breath or like my name, or else I

was trying to cough it up. My name, too small for me, was

wedged in my windpipe. Izzy was butterfly-bandaging

Shaman’s hole. Or plugging it. Or welding it. Or sewing it

closed.

"This is just a temporary," he said.

I coughed up my name. "I’m Mel Bellow!" I said, astonished, I

who had been the sun, the sky, Ganesha’s shakti, wind-blown

sand.

"We know who the hell you are," Izzy said. "You left home the

day after the US pulled out of Vietnam and President

McCarthy ended the draft, May 6, 1970, right? Happens to be

one of my bench marks. No more sitting by the mailbox

chewing on your lottery number, right, Mel? Slam goes the

door. Up goes the thumb. Izzovision, case you’re wondering."

"Izzy, be civil. He is traumatized," Sarvaduhka clucked.

"Sure," said Izzy. Now I could see he was sweating,

exhausted, still straddling me on all fours. His sweat fell into

my eyes and made me blink. I knew which one of us I was! He

said, "I’m Izzy. This guy here is Mr. Sarvaduhka, the motel

mogul. We’re pleased to make your acquaintance. Now let’s

haul ass back into the vehicle, because we got a lot of miles to

cover before we hit the launch site, and the Duke is hot for

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Asimov's - Izzy and the Father of Terror

nooky."

6. Certain Responsibilities Accrue

"My name is Izzy Molson," he told me over watery coffee from

a machine at a rest stop outside Amarillo. Sarvaduhka was

looking at magazines. "Some people think I’m psychic, other

people think I’m psycho, but I’m here to tell you that I’m just an

ordinary Joe with his ear to the ground. I’m currently employed

at the Gibson plant in Lockport, New York, setting up tool

machines, which I got because I lied about my medical history,

which you would too if you had a back like mine, and I’d

appreciate it in consideration of which, if you didn’t wrestle me

quite so vicious next time I do you a favor."

"Sorry." I sipped my coffee slowly, just to feel the warmth

spread, like dye staining the part of my world that was me.

"Forget it. Anyways, I happen to be able to see inside things,

like your noggin for example, past, present, and future,

regardless of distance?sometimes. Certain responsibilities

accrue. Which is why I am spending half of this vacation,

which I only get two weeks of at my present level of seniority

at Gibson, and my next vacation also, when it comes up, on

you. Gawd, I guess there’s no limit to how bad you can make

a cup of goddamned coffee." He wrinkled his nose and

swallowed the rest of it at a gulp. Then he squashed the

Styrofoam and threw it down with a shiver.

"Spending your vacations on me? What’s going on? A guy did

something to my mind . . ."

"Shaman."

"Yes! Then you fixed me somehow. That’s all I know."

"How can you drink that stuff so easy? You look like you like it!

You know, you can tell a lot about various civilizations by the

kind of coffee they put up with; that’s what I find. . . . Listen to

me. Shaman is trying to set you up to be his pabulum, Mel

boy."

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"He wants to eat me?"

"Yes, Mel, he wants to eat you, farm you and eat you. He’s

tired of hunting and gathering, let’s say. He’s been living catch-

as-catch-can for five, six thousand years, and now he wants to

cultivate, raise a family, like. Between you and me, he doesn’t

know what he’s in for in that department, but try to get

Shaman to listen to my say-so.

"Now, I’m just a little guy, see, but we can play the star guys

off against him, because they want you back on Sanduleak."

"Ah."

"Listen. Shaman’s gotta start fertilizing now to plant seeds next

year and harvest the year after that, when his larder gets

echoey. This is why I have committed two vacations, though

God knows there are things I’d rather be doing, named Fay in

East Tonawanda. You kapeesh, Old Lower Forty?"

"Why do I believe you’re not crazy?"

"It is written."

7. Shaman’s Farm

Many things were written of which I was unaware then, but

where I now live, folks know everything. Time flows differently

two hundred thousand light-years from my old galaxy. I look

up at the sky from Sanduleak, rotating five times a second,

and I see there the histories of all the worlds, compiled by

epoché. . . .

Shaman chose the womb of a twentieth century North

American woman to be born from. Egyptians, he had found,

were too hard to proselytize, Indians too easy, Japanese too

slavish, Australians too anarchic, but the American

bourgeoissie?perfect. He magnetized their children, told them

tales of Pharaohs and extraterrestrials, himself always in the

middle, Tuthmosis, seed of Chephren, son of the Great

Sphinx. Compare Chephren’s statue and the Sphinx: were not

their faces the same? Anciently, as Tuthmosis, he had

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excavated and restored the man-lion from the stars.

To prove it, he brought down lightning, made stars dance,

grew younger instead of older, humped or killed, without

compunction, everyone, high and low, male or female, drawing

his strength, he declared, from the Father of Terror, Abu al-

Hawl, the Great Sphinx. He visited the Father of Terror yearly,

in El Giza. Travel was difficult, but he had an easier way in

mind, more present and more permanent. That is why he

gathered his Space People. That is why he drilled a hole in my

mind. Many holes he drilled, to no effect, in many souls: the

Space People. But at the bottom of the hole in my mind he

glimpsed Abu.

8. Oil of Cloves

"What do I do? What am I supposed to do? You haven’t told

me anything!"

They were pulling away, about to leave me at the rest stop.

Sarvaduhka’s squareback screeched to a stop, sending a

cloud of dust back into my face. I ran to Izzy’s window.

Sarvaduhka was gritting his teeth and peevishly chanting,

"Female action, female action, Izzy. This is what you promised

me. This is what my vacation is about. Female action, female

action, female action."

"Never mind Sergeant Ducky," Izzy told me through the

window. "Jeez! We’ll see you next year. You’ll live till then,

don’t worry. I plugged you; that’s all I do this time. Just

remember, that thing is a temporary. If you start to feel

pressure . . . what can I say? Oil of cloves? The Lord’s

Prayer? My hands are tied, kid. I gotta be back at the plant in

a few days or they’ll fire my ass, and kimosabe here still has to

get his damned female action, and guess what: I just got this.

The North Vietnamese just overran the South. A rout. It’s all

over. Keep this in mind, Mel. It’s a good bench mark. Next

year we’ll plow you up and sow salt, don’t worry. Nobody’s

gonna farm you."

They were speeding away down the on ramp. The sun was so

hot, everything was white. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood

there. I stared at the place where Izzy had been, until my neck

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