Zelazny, Roger - Deus Irae

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Deus Irae

by Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny

eVersion 4.0 / Notes at EOF

Back cover:

He had prayed for a vision of the new God -- and was answered. . . .

A great clear light formed in the sky above him. Tibor peeped, half blinded, shielded his

eyes with the terminal of his left manual gripper. . . . He could make out features on its surface:

eyes, a mouth, ears, tangled hair. The mouth was screaming at him.

"You mock at me! See what I can do to save you if I wish. How easy it is. Pray!" the face

demanded. "On your hands and knees!"

"But," Tibor said, "I have no hands or knees."

All at once, Tibor found himself lifted upward, then set down hard on the grass. Legs. He

was kneeling. Only the God of Wrath could do what had just been achieved.

"Pray!" the face instructed. "Pray!"

PHILIP K. DICK & ROGER ZELAZNY

On their own, they have written landmark works that have added whole new dimensions

of wonder to the field of science fiction. Now, in Deus Irae, they have created what ALA Booklist

calls "the most successful collaboration in years!" -- set in a bizarre world where you will

encounter. . .

• A bunch of backwoods farmers who happen to be lizards. . .

• A tribe of foul-mouthed giant bugs who worship a dead VW sedan. . .

• An automated factory that can't decide whether to serve its customers -- or kill them.

Across this nightmare landscape -- pursued by an avenging angel on a bicycle -- one man

makes a painful pilgrimage in search of the one who changed the world so drastically -- the

legendary, but very real, God of Wrath. . .

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is

purely coincidental.

Published by

DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.

1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

New York, N.Y. 10017

Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

ISBN: 0-440-11838-7

Reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

Previous Dell Edition

Two printings

New Dell Edition

First printing-October 1980

"This novel, in loving memory, is dedicated to Stanley G. Weinbaum, for his having given the

world his story "A Martian Odyssey."

ONE

Here! The black-spotted cow drawing the bicycle cart. In the center of the cart. And at the

doorway of the sacristy Father Handy glanced against the morning sunlight from Wyoming to the

north as if the sun came from that direction, saw the church's employee, the limbless trunk with

knobbed head lolling as if in trip-fantastic to a slow jig as the Holstein cow wallowed forward.

A bad day, Father Handy thought. For he had to declare bad news to Tibor McMasters.

Turning, he reentered the church and hid himself; Tibor, on his cart, had not seen him, for Tibor

hung in the clutch of within-thoughts and nausea; it always came to this when the artist appeared

to begin his work: he was sick at his stomach, and any smell, any sight, even that of his own

work, made him cough. And Father Handy wondered about this, the repellency of sense-

reception early in the day, as if Tibor, he thought, does not want to be alive again another day.

He himself, the priest; he enjoyed the sun. The smell of hot, large clover from the

surrounding pastures of Charlottesville, Utah. The tink-tink of the tags of the cows. . . he sniffed

the air as it filled his church and yet -- not the sight of Tibor but the awareness of the limbless

man's pain; that caused him worry.

There, behind the altar, the miniscule part of the work which had been accomplished;

five years it would take Tibor, but time did not matter in a subject of this sort: through eternity --

no, Father Handy thought; not eternity, because this thing is man-made and hence cursed -- but

for ages, it will be here generations. The other armless, legless persons to arrive later, who would

not, could not, genuflect because they lacked the physiological equipment; this was accepted

officially. "Uuuuuuuub," the Holstein lowed, as Tibor, through his U.S. ICBM extensor

system, reined it to a halt in the rear yard of the church, where Father Handy kept his detired,

unmoving 1976 Cadillac, within which small lovely chickens, all feathered in gay gold, lumi-

nous, because they were Mexican banties, clung nightlong, bespoiling. . . and yet, why not? The

dung of handsome birds that roamed in a little flock, led by Herbert G, the rooster who had flung

himself up ages ago to confront all his rivals, won out and lived to be followed; a leader of beasts,

Father Handy thought moodily. Inborn quality in Herbert G, who, right now, scratched within the

succulent garden for bugs. For special mutant fat ones.

He, the priest, hated bugs, too many odd kinds, thrust up overnight from the fal't. . . so he

loved the predators who fed on the chitinous crawlers, loved his flock of -- amusing to think of --

birds! Not men.

But men arrived, at least on the Holy Day, Tuesday -- to differentiate it (purposefully)

from the archaic Christian Holy Day, Sunday.

In the hind yard, Tibor detached his cart from the cow. Then, on battery power, the cart

rolled up its special wood-plank ramp and into the church; Father Handy felt it within the

building, the arrival of the man without limbs, who, retching, fought to control his abridged body

so that he could resume work where he had left off at sunset yesterday.

To Ely, his wife, Father Handy said, "Do you have hot coffee for him? Please."

"Yes," she said, dry, dutiful, small, and withered, as if wetless personally; he disliked her

body drabness as he watched her lay out a Melmac cup and saucer, not with love but with the

unwarmed devotion of a priest's wife, therefore a priest's servant.

"Hi!" Tibor called cheerfully. Always, as if professionally, merry, above his physiological

retching and reretching.

"Black," Father Handy said. "Hot. Right here." He stood aside so that the cart, which was

massive for an indoor construct, could roll on through the corridor and into the church's kitchen.

"Morning, Mrs. Handy," Tibor said.

Ely Handy said dustily as she did not face the limbless man, "Good morning, Tibor. Pax

be with you and with thy saintly spark."

"Pax or pox?" Tibor said, and winked at Father Handy.

No answer; the woman puttered. Hate, Father Handy thought, can take marvelous

exceeding attenuated forms; he all at once yearned for it direct, open and ripe and directed

properly. Not this mere lack of grace, this formality. . . he watched her get milk from the cooler.

Tibor began the difficult task of drinking coffee.

First he needed to make his cart stationary. He locked the simple brake. Then detached the

selenoid-controlled relay from the ambulatory circuit and sent power from the liquid-helium

battery to the manual circuit. A clean aluminum tubular extension reached out and at its terminal

a six-digit gripping mechanism, each unit wired separately back through the surge-gates and to

the shoulder muscles of the limbless man, groped for the empty cup; then, as Tiber saw it was

still empty, he looked inquiringly.

"On the stove," Ely said, meaningly smiling. So the cart's brake had to be unlocked; Tibor

rolled to the stove, relocked the cart's brake once more via the selenoid selector-relays, and sent

his manual grippers to lift the pot. The aluminum tubular extensor, armlike, brought the pot up

tediously, in a near Parkinson-motion, until, finally, Tibor managed, through all the elaborate

ICBM guidance components, to pour coffee into his cup.

Father Handy said, "I won't join you because I had pyloric spasms last night and when I

got up this morning." He felt irritable, physically. Like you, he thought, I am, although a

Complete, having trouble with my body this morning: with glands and hormones. He lit a

cigarette, his first of the day, tasted the loose genuine tobacco, purled, and felt much better; one

chemical checked the overproduction of another, and now he seated himself at the table as Tibor,

smiling cheerfully still, drank the heated-over coffee without complaint. And yet --

Sometimes physical pain is a precognition of wicked things about to come, Father Handy

thought, and in your case; is that it, do you know what I shall -- must -- tell you today? No

choice, because what am I, if not a man-worm who is told; who, on Tuesday, tells, but this is only

one day, and just an hour of that day. "Tibor," he said, "wie geht es Heute?"

"Es geht mir gut," Tibor responded instantly.

They mutually loved their recollection and their use of German. It meant Goethe and

Heine and Schiller and Kafka and Falada; both men, together, lived for this and on this. Now,

since the work would soon come, it was a ritual, bordering on the sacred, a reminder of the after-

daylight hours when the painting proved impossible and they could -- had to -- merely talk. In the

semigloom of the kerosene lanterns and the firelight, which was a bad light source; too irregular,

and Tibor had complained, in his understating way, of eye fatigue. And that was a dreadful

harbinger, because nowhere in the Wyoming-Utah area could a lensman be found; no refractive

glasswork had been lately possible, at least as near as Father Handy knew.

It would require a Pilg to get glasses for Tibor, if that became necessary; he blenched

from that, because so often the church employee dragooned for a Pilg set off and never returned.

And they never even learned why; was it better elsewhere, or worse? It could -- or so he had

decided from the utterances of the 6 P.M. radio -- be that it consisted of both; it depended on the

place.

And the world, now, was many places. The connectives had been destroyed. That which

had made the once-castigated "uniformity."

" 'You understand,' " Father Handy chanted, singsong, from Ruddigore. And at once Tibor

ceased drinking his coffee.

" 'I think I do,' " he wailed back, finishing the quotation.

" 'That duty, duty must be done,' " he said, then. The coffee cup was set down, an

elaborate rejection costing the use of many surge-gates opening and closing.

" 'The rule,' " Father Handy said, " 'applies to everyone.' "

Half to himself, with real bitterness, Tibor said, " 'To shirk the task.' " He turned his head,

licked rapidly with his expert tongue, and gazed in deep, prolonged study at the priest. "What is

it?"

It is, Father Handy thought, the fact that I am linked; I am part of a network that whips

and quivers with the whole chain, shivered from above. And we believe -- as you know -- that the

final motion is given from that Elsewhere that we receive the dim emanations out of, data which

we strive honestly to understand and fulfill because we believe -- we know -- that what it wants is

not only strong but correct.

"We're not slaves," he said aloud. "We are, after all, servants. We can quit; you can. Even

I, if I felt it was right." But he would never; he had long ago decided, and taken a secret binding

oath on it. "Who makes you do your job here?" he said, then.

Tibor said cautiously, "Well, you pay me."

"But I don't compel you."

"I have to eat. That does."

Father Handy said, "We know this: you can find many jobs, at any place; you could be

anywhere working. Despite your -- handicap."

"The Dresden Amen," Tibor said.

"Eh? What?" He did not understand.

"Sometime," Tibor said, "when you have the generator reconnected to the electronic

organ, I'll play it for you; you'll recognize it. The Dresden Amen rises high. It points to an Above.

Where you are bullied from."

"Oh no," Father Handy protested.

"Oh yes," Tibor said sardonically, and his pinched face withered with the abuse of his

mis-emotion, his conviction. "Even if it's 'good,' a benign power. It still makes you do things. Just

tell me this: Do I have to paint out anything I've already done? Or does this deal with the over-all

mural?"

"With the final composition; what you've done is excellent. The color thirty-five-

millimeter slides we sent on -- they were delighted, those who looked at them; you know, the

Church Eltern."

Reflecting, Tibor said, "Strange. You can still get color film and get it processed. But you

can't get a daily newspaper."

"Well, there's the six-o'clock news on the radio," Father Handy pointed out. "From Salt

Lake City." He waited hopefully. There was no answer; the limbless man drank the coffee

silently. "Do you know," Father Handy said, "what the oldest word in the English language is?"

"No," Tibor said.

'"Might,"' Father Handy said. "In the sense of being mighty. It's Macht in the German. But

it goes further back than Teutonic; it goes all the way back to the Hittites."

"Hmmm."

"The Hittite word mekkis. 'Power.' " Again he waited hopefully. " 'Did you not chatter? Is

this not woman's way?' " He was quoting from Mozart's Magic Flute. " 'Man's way,' " he finished,

" 'is action.' "

Tibor said, "You're the one who's chattering."

"But you," Father Handy said, "must act. I had something to tell you." He reflected. "Oh

yes. The sheep." He had, behind the church in a five-acre pasture, six ewes. "I got a ram late

yesterday," he said, "from Theodore Benton. On loan, for breeding. Benton dumped him off

while I was gone. He's an old ram; he has gray on his muzzle."

"Hmmm."

"A dog came and tried to run the flock, that red Irish-setter thing of the Yeats'. You know;

it runs my ewes almost daily."

Interested now, the limbless man turned his head. "Did the ram --"

."Five times the dog approached the flock. Five times, moving very slowly, the ram

walked toward the dog, leaving the flock behind. The dog, of course, stopped and stood still

when he saw the ram coming toward him, and so the ram halted and pretended; he cropped."

Father Handy smiled as he remembered. "How smart the old fellow was; I saw him crop, but he

was watching the dog. The dog growled and barked, and the old fellow cropped on. And then

again the dog moved in. But this time the dog ran, he bounded by the ram; he got between the

ram and the flock."

"And the flock bolted."

"Yes. And the dog -- you know how they do, learn to do -- cut off one ewe, to run her

down; they kill the ewe, then, or maim them, they get them from the belly." He was silent. "And

the ram. He was too old; he couldn't run and catch up. He turned and watched."

Both men were then, together, silent.

"Can they think?" Tibor said. "The ram, I mean."

"I know," Father Handy said, "what I thought. I went to get my gun. To kill the dog. I had

to."

"If it was me," Tibor said, "if I was that ram, and I saw that, I saw the dog get by me and

run the flock and all I could do was watch --" He hesitated.

"You would wish," Father Handy said, "that you had already died."

"Yes."

"So death, as we teach the Servants of Wrath -- we teach that it is a solution. Not an

adversary, as the Christians taught, as Paul said. You remember their text. 'Death, where is thy

sting? Grave, where is thy victory?' You see my point."

Tibor said slowly, "If you can't do your job, better to be dead. What is the job I have to

do?"

In your mural, Father Handy thought, you must create His face.

"Him," he said. "And as He actually is." After a puzzled pause Tibor said, "You mean His

exact physical appearance?"

"Not," Father Handy said, "a subjective interpretation."

"You have photos? Vid data?"

"They've released a few to me. To be shown to you."

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DeusIraebyPhilipK.Dick&RogerZelaznyeVersion4.0/NotesatEOFBackcover:HehadprayedforavisionofthenewGod--andwasanswered....Agreatclearlightformedintheskyabovehim.Tiborpeeped,halfblinded,shieldedhiseyeswiththeterminalofhisleftmanualgripper....Hecouldmakeoutfeaturesonitssurface:eyes,amouth,ears,tangledhai...

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