DONNERJACK
by Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold
PART ONE
ONE
In Deep Fields he dwelled, though his presence extended beyond that place through Virtu. He was, in a highly specialized sense, the Lord of Everything, though others might claim that same title for different reasons. His claim was as valid as any, however, for his dominion was an undeniable fact of existence.
He moved amid the detritus of all the broken forms which had once functioned in Virtu. They came here, summoned or unsummoned, when the ends of their existence became fact. Of some, he salvaged portions for his own uses. The others settled where they fell and lay… strewn, to continue their decomposition, though some parts of them survived longer than others. Even as he strolled, pieces would rise up, in human form or other, perhaps to strut a few paces, mouth some words, perform a characteristic function of what they had been, then sink again into the dust and rubble of which they were becoming a part. Sometimes—as he did now—he stirred the heaps with his stick to see what reactions this would provoke. If he found some performance or some bit of knowledge, some key or code, of amusement or use, he would bear it away with him to his labyrinthine dwelling. He could assume any form, male or female, go where he would, but he always returned to his black-cloaked, hooded garb over an amazing slimness, flashes of white within the shadows he also wore.
There was a great silence in Deep Fields much of the time. Other times, discordant sounds rose, seemingly from the dust and rubble itself, squeals of entropy and when they fell away the silence seemed even deeper. His favorite reason for occasionally absenting himself from his realm was to hear patterned sounds—specifically, music. There was no other like him in all of creation. Known by thousands of names and euphemisms, his commonest appellation was Death.
And so Death walked, swinging his stick, beheading algorithms, pulping identities, cracking windows to other landscapes. Arms twisted upward from the ground as he passed, hands open, fingers flexing and his halo of moire and shadow passed over them and they fell back. Deep Fields was a place of perpetual twilight, yet he cast impenetrable, improbable shadow where he went, as if a piece of absolute night were always with him. Now, another piece of such darkness flapped into existence, black butterfly out of his arbitrary north—perhaps a piece of himself returning from a mission—to dart before him and settle finally upon his extended finger. It closed its wings as he raised it. A moment of cacophony came and went.
Then, “Intruders to the north,” it said, its voice high, piping, small dots of moire passing like static outward from it.
“You must have mistaken the activity of a fragment,” Death responded, soft as the darkness, low as the dying rumble of creation.
The butterfly let fall its wings and raised them again.
“No,” it said.
“No one intrudes here,” Death replied.
“They are rifling heaps, searching…”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Show me.”
The butterfly rose from his fingertip and skipped off to the north. Death followed to the sound of discord, odd pieces of reality flashing into and out of existence as he passed. The butterfly traveled on and Death mounted the hill, pausing when he had achieved the summit.
In the valley below two manlike forms—no, one was female—had excavated a trench to considerable depth. Now they were passing along its length, the man holding a light while the other removed things from the ground and cast them into a sack. Death, of course, was aware of much that lay in the area.
“What desecration is this?” Death inquired, raising his arms, his shadow flowing toward them. “You dare to invade my realm?”
The one with the sack straightened and the man dropped the light, which went out instantly. A great babble of voices and strident sounds filled the air as if in synchrony with Death’s ire. There came a small golden flicker from within the trench as his shadow reached it.
Then a gate opened, and the figures passed through it, just before the shadow flooded the trench with blackness.
The fluttering shape approached the hilltop.
“A key,” it said. “They had a key.”
“I do not give out keys to my realm,” Death stated. “I am disturbed. Could you tell where their gate took them?”
“No,” it replied.
Death moved his hands to his left, cupped them, opened them as if releasing a wish or an order.
“Hound, hound, out of the ground,” he muttered, and a heap of bone and metal stirred below in the direction he faced. Mismatched bones reared up, along with springs, straps, and struts, to form themselves together into an ungainly skeletal construct, to which pieces of plastic, metal, flesh, glass, and wood flew or slid, turning like puzzle pieces after unlikely congruencies, fitting themselves into such places, to be drenched suddenly by a rain of green ink and superglue, assailed by a blizzard of furniture covering and shag rug samples, dried by bursts of flame which belched from the ground upon all sides. “There is something that needs to be found,” Death finished.
The hound sought its master with its red right eye and its green left one, the right an inch higher than the left. It twitched its cable tails and moved forward.
When it reached the top of the hill it lowered itself to its belly and whined like a leaky air valve. Death extended his left hand and stroked its head lightly. Fearlessness, ruthlessness, relentlessness, the laws and ways of the hunt rose from the ground and rushed to wrap it, along with the aura of dread.
“Death’s dog, I name you Mizar,” he said. “Come with me now to take a scent.”
He led him down into the trench where Mizar lowered his head and nosed about.
“I will send you into the higher lands of Virtu to course the worlds and find those who have been here. If you cannot bring them back you must summon me to them.”
“How shall I summon you, Death?” Mizar asked.
“You must howl in a special way. I will teach you. Let me hear your howl.”
Mizar threw back his head, and the sound of a siren bled into the whistle of a locomotive mixed with the death-wails of a score of accident victims, and, from someplace, the howling of a wolf on a winter’s night, and the baying of hounds upon a trail. A legion of broken bodies, servomechs, and discarded environments stirred and flashed in the valley below, amid junk mail, core war casualties, worms, and crashed bulletin boards. It all settled again with a clatter when he lowered his head and the silence took hold of Deep Fields once more.
“Not bad,” Death observed. “Let me teach you to modulate it for a summoning.”
Immediately, the air was rent by a series of shrieks, wails, and howls which brought a stirring to all of Deep Fields with its pulsing pattern and which resulted in an inundation of new forms, falling, striding, shuffling, sliding into the realm, stirring the dark dust to haze the air through which new cacophonies traveled.
“That I will hear and recognize wheresoever you shall be,” Death stated, “and I will come to you when so summoned.”
A patch of blackness landed upon Mizar’s nose, and his lopsided eyes were crossed as he regarded the butterfly.
“I am Alioth, a messenger,” it told him. “I just wanted to say hello. You have a fine voice.”
“Hello,” Mizar answered. “Thank you.”
Alioth darted away.
“Come with me now,” Death said, and he moved to descend the trench.
An inky monkey-shape swung round a twisted beam to hang and watch them.
Entering the trench, Death led Mizar to the place where the two intruders had worked, and whence they had departed.