Roger Zelazny - A Farce To Be Reckoned With

"There's a young boy named Quentin…"

"He'll live in your memory."

"There's a witch named Ylith…"

"Don't you have a lock of her hair for a keepsake?"

"Can't you keep her alive?" Azzie asked. "And the boy, too? Take the rest."

"Of course I can keep her alive. I can do whatever I want. But I'm not going to let her live. Or the kid.

Or anyone else. Only you, Azzie. It's a kind of punishment, you see."

Azzie looked at Nameless. He had the feeling that things weren't going to be much different under the new cosmic management. But he wasn't going to be around to see it. It was time to fight, time to die.

"No, thanks," he said.

The tank rumbled forward. Now it was a beautiful machine made of an amalgam of anodized aluminum and glowing chrome. White-hot it glowed, and it moved toward Azzie. He dodged out of its way. Due to its melting state, its wheels sagged out of shape and it suddenly had a hard time moving. Nameless hadn't gotten that bit quite right.

The tank fired its cannon. From the cannon's maw came a blobby plastic ball that split upon contact with the sand. Out of it came chiggers and baby mice. All together, they began to dig what looked like a barbecue pit. Azzie was careful not to judge: he didn't know what Nameless had in mind, if anything.

The cannon fired again, but what came out this time was a bunch of notes of the sort musicians write on ruled paper. Azzie could hear Nameless saying, "Cannon, not canon!"

Nameless was having trouble reining in his exuberant imagination. The cannon fired again, and this time it emitted a cascade of multicolored spatter cones, which burbled and gurgled and gave off a noxious fizz.

The tank came into the center of the arena. There was a certain hesitancy about its movements, for it had learned that while Azzie might be negligible as an antagonist, Nameless himself was his own worst enemy. Azzie picked up a stone and prepared to throw it.

And then marching out of Nameless' corner came a host of headless people famous in history: Blackbeard, Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, the Headless Horseman, John the Baptist, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Mary Stuart, Medusa, Sir Thomas More, and Maximilien de Robespierre. They gathered in a phalanx, their heads tucked under their left arms in a military manner, right arms holding long lances with silvery tips. Robespierre led them, and he said afterward it was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life.

Azzie called up his own people, who came armed with gross weapons, but they soon faded away. One of Nameless' few rules was that Azzie was going to have to do this alone.

Then Nameless opened a mouth of dirt and boulders and, towering above Azzie, proceeded to snap and bite at him.

"You're crazy!" Azzie cried.

"No," Nameless said. "Why don't you die?"

"You're a poor creation," Azzie said.

"Are you sure we need this combat? Couldn't you just die and have done with it?"

"Sorry," Azzie muttered.

Azzie looked around. The twelve Olympians, led by Zeus, were sitting on marble steps near to Babriel, Michael, and Ylith. There were new people there, too: Prince Charming and Princess Scarlet, Johann Faust and Marguerite. They rose as one and advanced into the arena.

"This isn't fair!" Nameless said. "You're not allowed to summon help."

"I didn't summon them," Azzie said. "They came on their own."

"I haven't had any time yet to create friends and allies!"

"I know," Ylith said. "You chose to go it alone."

"Too late now," Michael the Archangel said. He stood at the front of the Heavenly hosts. "I think we are all agreed that you, Nameless, are quite unsuited to be Supreme Deity. We're going to join together now and dispose of you."

Then there was a sound of singing, a single strong male voice leading a rousing melody. It was Aretino, singing a Renaissance version of "Onward Christian Soldiers." The chorus was made up of all the others

— Quentin and Puss, Kornglow and Leonore, Sir Oliver and Mother Joanna, Rodrigo and Cressilda.

They formed a tight circle around the combatants and urged Azzie on. But how silly it was to urge him, he reflected, for there was nothing he could do. The power of this creature from darkest probability had already proven too much for him.

"You don't have to die," Ylith was saying to him. "Ananke is defeated only if you are. You've had the courage to mount your play. Keep fighting!"

e death." He seized Azzie in a powerful grip.

Then Quentin cried, "You can't kill him!"

"I can't? Why not?"

"Because he's my friend."

"Young man, you don't seem to realize what an exposed position you're in. I'm the Eater of Souls, my boy. Yours will be like a little maraschino cherry on top of the whipped-cream sundae of this foolish demon here."

"No!" And Quentin smacked Nameless over the head with his open palm. Nameless reared back on his wheels, baring his teeth, and Puss poked the superdeity in the stomach. Nameless collapsed onto the bloody sand. Sir Oliver came into the ring tugging a lance, and with Mother Joanna's help he poked Nameless in the eye.

"Oh, this is too much," Nameless said as the lance passed through his head and he died.

Ananke appeared in the heavens above them, her old lady's face smiling.

"Well done, my children!" she cried. "I knew you could all cooperate, if the cause were dire enough."

"So that's why you hatched this scheme!" Azzie cried.

"One of many reasons, my pet," Ananke said. "There are always reasons within reasons, and every reason for a reason may itself be scrutinized and its constituent reasons adduced. Don't question it, my friend. You are alive, all of you."

And then they all came together into a dance. They held hands, they mounted to the air. Faster and higher they flew, all of them together, all of them there except…

Aretino suddenly woke with a snort. He sat up in bed and looked out the window. The sun was shining on Venice. Beside him on the bed was a manuscript, The Legend of the Golden Candlesticks.

He remembered now that he had dreamed a fantastic dream. That was one explanation.

Another explanation was that Azzie had succeeded in preserving Venice in Limbo.

He looked out the window. People were walking past, Kornglow and Leonore among them.

"What's happening?" Aretino called out.

Kornglow looked up. "Take care, Aretino! They say the Mongols are coming any moment."

So Venice was doomed? Then Aretino knew that everything was all right. What he needed now was to find a quiet place to sit down and continue work on his play.

Aretino woke up on a splendid morning to realize that during the night he had had an unaccountable dream, in which a demon had come to him and ordered him to write a play. The play was about pilgrims and golden candlesticks, and the result so outraged the powers of the universe that Venice was put to destruction. But then Ananke decided to spare it, so the time track of the city that had continued his actions with the demon was cut away and sent to Limbo. And he had awakened in Venice in the real world.

Fatus felt a certain alarm when he was told that a new place had arrived in Limbo. Limbo was a place of many regions that had been and many that never were. The garden of the Hesperides was here, and Arthur's court of Camelot, and the lost city of Lys.

The new place was Venice, the Venice of Catastrophes, and he went for a walk in this place and marveled at its beauty. The people didn't know it was all fading out, dying, to be renewed again each day. He walked and walked, through scenes of death and dying, and he felt it all very lively. Each day it would start anew. He wished he could tell people that, that there was no reason ever to fear, because in the morning it would all start again. But the people wouldn't listen to him and so lived forever in a state of alarm, starting each day afresh.