Edgar Pangborn - A Mirror for Observers

Kneeling in the unremembering dark, I could look across ten days and see that rain-drenched afternoon as it must have been. Feuermann had said: “Sun’s up there somewhere.” Few would have thought of that. No human being at all would have visited this small cemetery on such a weeping day, except the old man. He did. He stood in the rain for whatever harmless consolation it gave him, and the thing came on him out of the grass.

I ran my thumb through earth where there should have been a network of grass roots and was not. Behind me — oh, moonrise was still far off — behind me, Namir said: “He’s there. You needn’t undo my grubby work.”

He watched from the higher ground, a killing animal with the face of Feuermann and glints of our blue night-fire in his eyes. You reminded me, Drozma, that he is a creature always in pain. He seemed so, tight-mouthed, head thrust forward on wide shoulders. But I think the pain of those who live with evil becomes something other than pain. I think they come to love it, as a victim of heroin bitterly loves his affliction. How else explain the desperate recidivism of so many criminals, the persistent fury of a fanatic with the black dog of one idea on his back, the mountain of corpses around a Hitler? It was no simple hysteria when the witches of other recent centuries boasted of coupling with the devil.

His very pose was tigerish. But a tiger is innocent, merely hungry or curious at the wriggling of smaller life. I said: “Do you care to tell me how you justify it to yourself?”

“Justify? No.”

“Explain, then?”

“Not to an Observer. Some will honor what I am, in the future.”

“You have no future. But you still have a choice.”

“I make my own choices.” I saw the simple long-bladed knife come into his hand. “Sometimes with this.” He did not see the round stone I took from Feuermann’s burial place before I stood.

“Is that how Feuermann died?”

“Yes, Elmis, if you want to speak of anything so definite as death after the mean half-life of his tribe.”

“He had no chance to defend himself?”

“Should he have had? Why, Elmis, he even smiled. He said: ‘Here, you don’t want to do that, I haven’t done you any harm.’ You see? His small mind simply couldn’t imagine that anyone could regard his life as of no importance. He said: ‘What’s the gag?’ And held out his hand for the knife as if I were a naughty boy — I! Then he saw that his face was already mine, and it confused him. He said: ‘Does every man have another self? I’m dreaming this.’ So I ended the dream for him, and now for you.”

“Nothing to you, that my blood on the grass would be orange blood?”

“Nothing. Why let it worry you? If they find you in time for autopsy, you’ll be back on page three as soon as there’s a livelier murder with a sex angle.”

“You’re only a small devil, Namir. Back of me there are thirty thousand years on Earth, my planet Earth.”

“Then defend yourself with your thirty thousand.” And he came down the slope, stumbling in haste, panting as if he suffered. The stone caught him on the cheek, jarring the true skullbone under his artificial flesh, half stunning and toppling him. The knife leaped away into the dark. He rose immediately and closed with me, hands at my throat and mine at his, his face straining toward me as if he loved me but loved the thought of my death a little more. I broke his clutch on my windpipe and gripped his shoulders over the subclavicular nerve clusters where a Martian should feel pain, but he was hard to down.

We swayed and struggled so for a longer time than I can measure. It may have been only seconds, since the moon had still not risen when it was over. Once I heard him gasp: “Do you yield, Elmis? Do you now?” Later, when I had forced him back to the broken turf of Feuermann’s grave, he choked on other words, sensing the shadow of his own death as a weasel might know the shadow of sudden wings: “I am old — but I have a son….” He felt uneven ground under him, and raised his knee to foul me with it, but I had been waiting for that. My foot wrenched his other leg and he went down at last on the soft ground; his arms were straws and with his body he ceased fighting. He groaned: “I am one of many. We live forever.”

I found his knife and slipped it under my belt. “There’s still a choice. The hospital in Old City, or this.” I showed him the grenade. “I have another. Perhaps you still have one of your own you’d rather use?”

“Little snot-nose cousin of the angels — no, I have none.”

“When was yours used?”

“In Kashmir.” He fumbled aimlessly at the grass, his eyes a blue blaze of memory and some laughter. “Maybe a century ago — want to hear?”

“I must.”

“Oh yes, your precious duty. What a milky vanity! Well, there was a little chap with something of the Buddha in him. Rather like Angelo. I taught him a while, but he abandoned me. He might well have been another Buddha. I had to dispose of him. He’d already begun preaching, you see. I didn’t want his body turned into holy relics, so I used the grenade in such a manner that he is still a vaguely remembered devil, Elmis, in two or three illiterate villages. Peace, he was saying; magnify the inner light by honoring the light of others — dreadful stuff, you know the style, and he only a beginner. He liked to quote the last words of Gautama, and other fools had started to listen. ‘Whosoever now, Ananda, or after my departure, shall be to himself his own light, his own refuge, and seek no other refuge, will henceforth be my true disciple and walk in the right path—’ and so on and so on, with little additions of his own.”

“And for that you found it necessary to destroy—”

“Yes, give me credit for nipping at least one tiresome religion in the bud. I was fond of him, too. He was quite like Angelo, who was sneaking down toward South Calumet Street, by the way, when I left the house to follow you—”

“How’s that?”

“South end. War, you know.” He smiled up at me, not looking at the grenade. “The Diggers are meeting the Mudhawks tonight Angelo and Billy Kell — that’s quite a boy, Billy.” He could not quite control the slyness with which he glanced away, and that may be one more grain of proof for what I suspect about Billy Kell. “Well, they had a council of strategy, on which I eaves. dropped. Angelo had some very sound ideas. One in particular making use of rooftops, appealed to me. The Mudhawks will occupy the roofs on Lowell Street, where the Diggers have to pass on their way to the prearranged engagement, which is to be in Quire Lane. I believe both armies use what they call gleep-guns. Instead of bullets they shoot twenty-penny nails, variation of the arbalest. You might get the best view from the corner of Lowell and Quire Lane, if it isn’t all over when you get there — don’t let me detain you!” Some of his laughter may have been genuine. “Ah yes, the choice! Elmis, I wish you could know how funny you look. You imagine you can destroy me?”

“An instrument of my people and others. Hospital or grenade?”

“Grenade of course.” And he ceased laughing.

“Only twelve Salvayans in all history have died by execution. They took the grenade with unbound hands. I’d like to respect that tradition, if I thought I could trust you…. Do you respect it?”

“Of course. A signal honor: No. 13.” He stretched his arms above his head and spoke with real sorrow, although I heard no overtone of regret. “I am Salvayan too, Elmis. Also old and tired.”

I set the grenade at his waist and stood back.

He taught my foolish mind, then, what 346 years had never quite taught me: there is no such thing as hearing truth from those who despise it. He snatched the grenade and flung it in a great arc. It missed me, struck a willow, filled the graveyard with a second’s purple brilliance as sap and new wood of the lower trunk dissolved. The treetop plunged toward me in a long whispering and rushing. I had to jump like a fool to save myself. Namir’s high laughter snarled back from among the graves: “Explain that to your adopted people!”