Deus Irae

game.’ That’s it, he realized. Poetry, even great poetry, couldn’t be any better.

I’ve played the game with honesty and skill, he informed himself.

“ ‘If wishes were horses then beggars might ride,’ “ he quoted aloud. Silence, except for the breathing of himself and the cow—the animal still strained to reach some lush weeds not far off. “You’re hungry,” he said to her. So am I, he thought. And then he thought, That is how both of us will die: of thirst and hunger. We will drink our own urine to stay alive a little longer, he realized. And it won’t help.

My life depends on a creature small enough to fit in my hand, he thought. A mutant jay bird… and jays are noted for their lying, stealing ways. A jay is virtually a convict. Why couldn’t it have been a thrush?

He thought then of a thought which had buffeted him for years. A picture of a creature, some kind of fairly small furred animal. The animal, silently and alone, at its burrow, would build gay and complex oddities, which eventually, when there were enough, it at last carried to a nearby road. There it would set up shop, spreading out on each side of it the things it had made. It sat there in silence all day, waiting for someone to come along and buy one of the things it had made. Time would pass; afternoon would disappear into evening; the world would darken. But the creature had not sold any of its creations. At last, in the glooming, it would wordlessly, meekly, gather up its oddities and go off with them, defeated, but voicing no complaint. Yet its defeat was total, despite the fact that the defeat came slowly, amid silence. As he himself sat here, waiting. He would, like the creature, wait and wait; the world would grow dark, then lighten the next day. And so it would go, again. Until at last he would not awaken with the sun; there would be no more silent hope—only an inert body slumped in the seat of the cart. I must let the cow loose eventually, he realized. But I’ll keep her here as long as I can. It is reassuring to see another creature, he decided. At least as long as it’s not suffering.

Are you suffering? he wondered. No, you don’t understand; for you it’s only a period of immobility, with no recognition of what the immobility signifies.

“Lord of Wrath,” he said aloud, voicing the familiar liturgy. “Come to me. Scourge me over all and take me with you to Country. Place me among the ranks of the Great Florist.” He waited, eyes shut. No response. “Are you with me?” he asked. “Sir, you who have done so much; you who control all suffering. Redeem me from my present suffering. You made it happen; you are responsible for my travail. Lift me out of it as only you can do, Deus Irae.”

At that he paused and waited. Still no response, either in the world outside him or in the internal realm of his mind.

I will consult—hell, not consult; beg—the older God to appear, he told himself. The defeated, vestigial religion of our forefathers.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
dona eis requiem sempiternam.

Still nothing. Neither had helped.

But His ways are sometimes slow, he reflected. His time is not our time; for Him it may be only a blink of the eye.

Libera me domine.

“I give up,” he said aloud, and felt himself, his body, do so. All at once he was tired; in fact he could not hold his head up. Maybe this is the release I asked for, he thought. Maybe He will give me a nice death, a painless one: swift and quiet. A sort of going to sleep, as they used to provide sick or injured pet animals… whom they loved.

Tremens factus sum ego et timeo!

Bits and pieces of the old mass, or was it from a medieval poem? A Catholic requiem?

Mors stupebit et natura,
cum resurget creatura, judicanti responsura!

He could remember nothing more. The hell with it, he decided. They never come when you want them, he told himself.

A great clear light formed in the sky above him. He peeped, half blinded, shielding his eyes with the terminal of his left manual gripper. The clear light sank toward him; now it had become smoky red, a billowing, nebulous disk that seemed heated up and inflamed, angry from within. And now it could be heard: a sizzling racket like rushing wind or something white-hot being plunged furiously into water. A few initial warm drops of moisture dripped down on him. The particles scalded him and, instinctively, he shoved his body aside.

The disk above him grew into a more formed—but still plastic—state. He could make out features on its surface: eyes, a mouth, ears, tangled hair. The mouth was screaming at him, but he could not make out the words. “What?” he said, still gazing upward. He saw now that the face was angry, at him. What had he done to displease it? He did not even know who or what it was.

“You mock at me!” the shifting, vibrating, weepy face roared. “I am a candle to you, a dim light leading into light. See what I can do to save you if I wish. How easy it is.” The mouth of the face bubbled with words. “Pray!” the face demanded. “On your hands and knees!”

“But,” Tibor said, “I have no hands or knees.”

“It is mine to do,” the great lit-up face said. Tibor all at once found himself lifted upward, then set down hard, on the grass by the cart. Legs. He was kneeling. He saw the long mobile forms, two of them, supporting him. He saw, too, his arms and hands, on which the top portion of his frame rested. And his feet.

“You,” Tibor gasped, “are Carleton Lufteufel.” Only the God of Wrath could do what had just been achieved.

“Pray!” the face instructed.

Tibor said, mumbling his words, “I have never mocked the greatest entity in the universe. I beg not for forgiveness, but for understanding. If you knew me better—”

“I know you, Tibor,” the face declared.

“Not really. Not completely. I am a complex person, and theology itself is complex, these days. I have done no worse than anyone else; in fact much better than most. Do you understand that I am on a Pilg, searching for your physical identity, so that I can paint—”

“I know,” the God of Wrath interrupted. “I know what you know and a great many more things besides. I sent the bird. I caused you to travel close enough to the worm so that he would come out and try to gnaw on you. Do you understand that? It was I who made your right front wheel bearings go out. You have been in my power all this time. Throughout your Pilg.”

Tibor, using his new hands, reached into the storage compartment of the cart and whipped out an instant Color-Pack Polaroid Land camera; he took a quick shot of the moaning face above him, then waited impatiently for the ring to sound.

“You did what?” the mouth demanded. “You took a photograph of me?”

“Yes,” Tibor said. “To see if you’re real.” And for other very real reasons.

“I am real.” The mouth spat out its rebuttal.

“Why have you done all these things?” Tibor asked. “What is there so important about me?”

“You are not important. But your Pilg is. You intend to find me and kill me.”

“No!” Tibor shot back. “Just to photograph you!” He grabbed the edge of the print and dragged it out of the protesting camera.

The picture showed the wild, frenzied face absolutely clearly. Beyond any possibility of doubt.

It was Carleton Lufteufel. The man he had searched for. The man who lay at the far end of his god-knew-how- long Pilg.

The Pilg was over.

“You are going to use that?” the Deus Irae inquired. “That snapshot? No, I do not like it.” A quiver of his chin… and, in Tiber’s right hand, the print shriveled up, let loose a plume of smoke, and fell quietly to the ground in me form of ashes.

“And my arms and legs?” Tibor said, panting.

“Mine, too.” The God of Wrath studied him, and, as he did so, Tibor found himself rising like a rag doll. He landed on his ass in the driver’s seat of the cart. And, at the same moment, his legs, his feet, his arms, his hands —all vanished. Once again he was limbless; he sat there in his seat, panting in frenzy. For a few seconds he had been like everyone else. It was the ultimate moment for Tibor: restitution for an entire life led in this useless condition.

“God,” he managed to say, presently.

“Do you see?” the God of Wrath demanded. “Do you understand what I can do?”