Deus Irae

“How fast does the sun move?”

“About a million miles per hour.”

“It’s bigger than it looks, isn’t it?” The lizard peered at him.

“Much bigger. Almost a billion miles in circumference.”

“Have you been there?” the lizard asked.

“I said,” Tibor said, “No life can exist on the sun. Anyhow, the surface is melted; there wouldn’t be any place to stand.” Who is it following me? he wondered. “A highwayman?” he asked aloud. “The human lurking me—what’s he look like?”

“Young,” the lizard said.

“Pete Sands,” Tibor said flatly.

The two other lizards emerged from the darkness; Potter held a great gray animal who whined passionately when it saw Tibor—a whine of love. Tibor studied it; the dog studied him in return.

“Toby likes you,” Jackson said.

“I would like a dog very much,” Tibor said yearningly. It would be his friend, the way Tom Swift And His Electric Magic Carpet was to Pete. A deep and strange feeling welled up in him, a hope. “Wow,” he said. He sent his front extensors out to grapple gently at the quivering brown mop of fur, the glorious tail wagger. “But are you willing to part with such a fine—”

Jackson said brusquely, “Humans must be protected. It is the law. We knew this from the moment of our births.”

“So they can repopulate back,” Potter said. “With their intact genes.”

“What’s a gene?” Tibor asked.

Potter gestured. “You know. An ingredient in masculine sperm.”

“What’s sperm?” Tibor asked.

They all laughed, but, shyly, did not answer.

“What does this dog eat?” Tibor asked, then.

“Anything,” Jackson said. “He can forage. He is reliant.”

“How long will he live?”

“Oh, probably two to three hundred years.”

Tibor said, “Then he will outlive me.” For some reason this depressed him; all at once he felt weak and cold. I shouldn’t feel this way, he reasoned with himself. Already brought down by thoughts of separation. After all, I’m a human being. At least these lizards think I am; I’m good enough for them. I should feel strength and pride, he thought, and not envision ahead already that terrible end of friendships, for us all.

Suddenly the three lizards whipped about, peering into the darkness, their bodies straining against or toward something invisible.

“What is it?” Tibor said; again he clutched at the pistol concealed on his person.

“Bugs,” Potter said laconically.

“The dumb bastards,” Jackson said.

Bugs, Tibor thought. How horrible. He had heard of them many tunes, them and their multifaceted eyes, their gleaming shells—a weird conglomeration of unhuman parts. And to think that they bred their way out of mammals, he thought, and in such a few short years. Speeded up frantically by the radiation. We’re related to them and they stink. They offend the world. And surely they offend God.

“What are you doing there?” a metallic voice buzzed. Tibor saw them moving, upright; they lurched toward the.light. “Lizzys,” the bug said scathingly. “And—Frebis forbid!—an inc.”

Five bugs stood by the light now, warming their—Christ, Tibor thought. Warming their brittle bodies; if a bug was hit directly in the breadbasket, it broke in half. So much for bugs: they depended mainly on their facile tongues to get them what they wanted. Bugs talked their way out of a good deal of trouble; they were the lie-spinners of Earth.

These were unarmed. As near as he could make out. And, standing by his cart, the three lizards relaxed; their fear had departed.

“Hey, bug,” Jackson said, nodding toward one of the chitin-shelled creatures. “How come you have lungs? Where’d you get them? Vermin shouldn’t have lungs. It’s against nature.”

Potter said, “We ought to cook us up a little bug soup.”

Incredulous, Tibor said, “You mean you eat them?”

“Right,” the third lizard said, his arms folded, leaning against Tiber’s cart. “When times are tough… they taste awful.”

“You rotting obnoxious freak,” one bug said. They did not seem frightened; they made no move in the direction of escape.

“Does your tail come off?” another bug said to the three lizards.

“What tail?” another bug said. “That’s its pecker hanging down behind it. Lizards’ peckers stick out behind, not in front.”

The bugs laughed coarsely.

“I saw this lizard once,” a bug declared, “who had an erection—and he got scared off, I guess her husband came back, and he tried to run, and all the husband had to do was tromp down with his foot on that great hard pecker sticking out behind.” All the bugs laughed; they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“What happened after he tromped down on it?” a bug asked. “Did it come off then?”

“It came off,” the other bug continued, “and it lay there twitching and flopping in the dirt until sundown.”

Potter said, “Let’s take these insects down a peg or two. Listen to them—they’re uppity.” He glanced around him, apparently seeking something to use as a weapon. He took his tune and the bugs did not move; they seemed relaxed and confident.

And now Tibor saw why. The bugs had not ventured out alone. A score of runners had accompanied them.

Nine

This was not his first encounter with runners. Back in Charlottesville, runners came and went unmolested. Wherever runners could be found, a kind of peace prevailed, an idiomatic tranquility, engendered by the benign habits of the runners themselves.

The good-natured little faces peered up at Tibor. The creatures were not over four feet high. Fat and round, covered with thick pelts… beady eyes, quivering noses—and great kangaroo legs.

Amazing, these swift evolutionary entelechies, cast forth from what were essentially poisons. So many and so fast; so many immediate kinds. Nature, striving to overcome the filth of the war: the toxins.

“Clearness be with you,” the runners said, virtually in unison. Their whiskers twitched. “How come you don’t have any arms or legs? You’re very strange as a life-form.”

“The war,” Tibor said vaguely, resenting the pushiness of the runners.

“Did you know your cart is malfunctioning?” the runners asked.

“No,” he said, taken by surprise. “Doesn’t it run? It got me this far; I mean—” Panic flew up inside him.

“There is an autofac near here that still works a little,” the largest of the runners said. “It can’t do very much —not like it could in olden tunes. But it could probably replace the wheel bearings in your cart that are running dry. And the cost is not all that great.”

“Oh yes,” Tiber said. “The wheel bearings. They probably are running dry.” He lifted one wheel off the ground and spun it noisily. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Where’s the autofac?”

“A few miles north of here,” the smallest of the runners said. “Follow me.” The other runners scampered into a group that eased itself off. “Or rather,” the runner amended, “follow us. Hey, are you guys coming along, too?”

“Sure,” the body of runners said, whiskers twitching. They obviously did not want to miss out on any of the action.

To Potter and Jackson, Tibor said, “Can I trust them?” He held in his mind, at this moment, a nebulous fear: Suppose the runners led him off to some desolate region, then killed him and stole his cart? It seemed a distinct possibility, the times being what they were.

Potter said, “You can trust them. They’re harmless. Which is more than you can say for these damn bugs.” He kicked at a cluster of bugs; they scuttled away, avoiding his scaly foot.

“An autofac, an autofac,” the runners chanted happily as they raced off. Tibor cautiously followed. “We’re going to the autofac and get the limbless man a cheap repair. It’s guaranteed for a thousand years or a million miles;