“I see. It will cost you ten.”
“Make it five?”
“Get yourself another preacher.”
“All right ten! C’mon! They’re starting to clap their hands and boo!”
He moves into the tent, blinks his eyes.
“Here’s the preacher!” calls out the emcee. “We’re ready to go ahead now. -What’cher name, Dad?”
“Sometimes I'm called Madrak.”
The man stops, turns and stares at him, licks his lips.
“I… didn’t realize.”
“Let’s be on with it”
“Okay, sir. -Make way here! Coming through! Hot stuff!”
The crowd parts. There are perhaps three hundred people within the tent. Overhead lights blaze down upon a roped-in circle of bare earth in which a grave has been dug. Insects fly in rings through falling dust within the ladders of light. An opened coffin lies beside the opened grave. On a small platform of wood is a chair. The man seated upon the chair is perhaps fifty years of age. His face is flat and full of wrinkles, his complexion pale. His eyes bulge slightly. He wears only a pair of shorts, and he has much gray hair upon his chest, his arms, his legs. He leans forward and squints as the two approach through the crowd.
“All set, Dolmin,” says the small man.
“My ten,” says Madrak.
The small man slips him a folded bill, which Madrak inspects and places in his wallet.
The small man climbs up onto the platform and smiles out over the crowd. Then he pushes his straw hat back upon his head.
“All right, folks,” he begins, “now we’re all set to go. I know you’ll find this was worth waiting for. As I announced earlier, this man Dolmin is about to commit suicide before your very eyes. For personal reasons he is resigning from the big race, and he has consented to earn a little money for his family by doing it in full sight of all. His performance will be followed by a genuine burial, in this same ground upon which you are now standing. It has doubtless been a long time since any of you have seen a real death-and I doubt anyone here present has ever seen a burial. So we’re about ready to turn this show over to the preacher and Mister Dolmin. Let’s have a nice hand
for them both!”
There is applause within the tent.
“… And a final word of caution. Do not stand too close. We are bending an ordnance, despite the fact that this tent has been fully fireproofed. Okay! Take it away!”
He jumps down from the platform as Madrak mounts it. Madrak leans toward the seated man as a can marked flammable is placed beside his chair. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asks the man.
“Yes.”
He looks into the man’s eyes, but the pupils are not enlarged, nor are they shrunken.
“Why?”
“Personal reasons, Dad. I'd rather not go into them. Shrive me, please.”
Madrak places his hand upon the man’s head.
“Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen.”
“Thank you, Dad.”
“Beautiful!” sobs a fat woman with blue wings, from the front row.
The man called Dolmin raises the can marked flammable, unscrews the cap, pours its contents over himself. “Has anyone got a cigarette?” he asks, and the small man hands one up to him. Dolmin reaches into the pocket of his shorts and withdraws a lighter. Then he pauses and looks out over the crowd. Someone calls out, “Why are you doing it?” He smiles then and replies, “A general protest against life, perhaps, which is a foolish game, is it not? Follow me…” Then he lights the lighter. By this time, Madrak is well outside the roped-in circle.
A blast of heat follows the blaze, and the single scream is a hot nail driven through everything.
The six men who are standing by with fire extinguishers relax when they see that the flames will not spread.
Madrak folds his hands beneath his chin and rests them upon his staff.
After a time, the flames go out and the men with asbestos gloves come forward to handle the remains. The audience is quiet. There has been no applause thus far.
“So that’s what it's like!” someone finally whispers, and the words carry throughout the tent.
“Perhaps,” comes a precise, cheerful voice from the back of the tent, “and perhaps not, also.”
Heads turn as the speaker moves forward. He is tall and has a pointed green beard and matching eyes and hair. His complexion is pale, his nose long and thin. He wears black and green.
“It is the magician,” someone says, “from the show across the river.”
“Correct,” he replies, with a nod and a smile, and he makes his way forward through the crowd, clearing his path with a silver-topped cane. The lid is closed on the casket as he pauses and whispers, “Madrak the Mighty.”
Madrak turns and says, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. What is this silly business?”
“Suicide show,” says Madrak. “A man named Dolmin. They’ve forgotten what death is like.”
“So soon, so soon,” sighs the other. “Then let us give them their money’s worth-full circle!”
“Vramin, I know you can do it, but considering the shape he’s in-“
The small man in the straw hat approaches and regards them with his small, dark eyes.
“Sir,” he says to Madrak, “any other ceremonial things you’d care to do before the interment?”
“I-“
“Of course not,” says Vramin. “One only buries the dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“That man is not dead-only smoldering.”
“You’re wrong, mister. This is an honest show.”
“Nevertheless, I say he lives and will walk again for your amusement.”
“You must be some kind of ‘chotic.”
“Only an humble thaumaturge,” Vramin replies, stepping into the circle.
Madrak follows him. Vramin then raises his cane and weaves it through a cryptic gesture. It glows with green light, which then leaps forward and falls upon the box.
“Dolmin, come forth!” says Vramin.
The audience presses forward. Vramin and Madrak move to the wall of the tent. The small man would follow them, but is distracted by a knocking from within the coffin.
“Brother, we'd best leave,” says Vramin, and slices through the fabric with the tip of his cane.
The lid of the coffin is slowly raised as they step through the wall and into the world without.
Beyond them a sound occurs. It is compounded of screaming and cries of “Fake!” and “We want our money back!” and “Look at him!”
“ ‘What fools these mortals be,’ ” says the green man, who is one of the few persons living able to put quotation marks around it and know why.
He is coming, riding down the sky on the back of a great beast of burnished metal. It has eight legs and its hooves are diamonds. Its body is as long as two horses. Its neck is as long as its body, and its head is that of a Chinese demon dog out of gold. Beams of blue light come forth from its nostrils and its tail is three antennae. It moves across the blackness that lies between the stars, and its mechanical legs move slowly. Each step that it takes, however, crossing from nothing to nothing, carries it twice the distance of the previous step. Each stride also takes the same amount of time as the prior one. Suns flash by, fall behind, wink out. It runs through solid matter, passes through infernos, pierces nebulae, faster and faster moving through the starfall blizzard in the forest of the night. Given a sufficient warm-up run, it is said that it could circumnavigate the universe in a single stride. What would happen if it kept running after that, no one knows.