Short Fiction - Algis Budrys (chrysanthemum read aloud .TXT) 📗

around?” the old man growled. “You may be a god to some, but you are not my god.”

“You owe it to me, atheist. If I was awakened today, at this pat moment, I could have been awakened before. I wasn’t. You kept me asleep, guardian, when I could have been free as any other man. So you owe me.”

The old man grunted. “You’re brave with Mayron and brave with me. But all men are brave, each in his own way. We need no gods.”

“But you have one.”

Adelie touched his arm. “You have lived from the beginning of human history. And you were a great hero. That much the legends tell us. You were braver than any man, and for your bravery, you could not die. While other heroes conquered the stars and, in their time, died, you lived on. While enemy after enemy was beaten by Man, and the victorious men died, you lived on. The stars and all worlds became ours. Men loved and begat, and men died, but you lived on. It seemed to us that as long as you lived, all men would have something to remember⁠—how great Man is; what the reward of courage can be. It seemed only fitting that we should bring to you the trophies of our achievements. It seemed only right to believe that you had survived to some purpose⁠—that a day would come when Man would need his greatest hero.”

“Precisely,” Vigil snorted. “Man worships nothing but himself. You were a convenient symbol. It did no harm. It may have done some good. Of course, the chuckleheads took it all literally. And so⁠—thanks to Man’s stupid persistence in breeding idiots as well as men with some brains, you, whoever you are, whatever kind of filibustering bravo you actually were, have become the focus of a cult populated by the credulous, the neurotic and those who profit by them. I hope you are grateful for your legacy!”

Greaves looked up at the stars. There were some constellations that might have been the ones he knew, distorted by his transit to another viewpoint⁠ ⁠… or by time. He was no astronomer.

I’ve come a long way, he thought, and I wonder what the end of it will be. “Those who profit from the credulous, hmm?” he said to Vigil.

“I am your guardian and I guarded you. As many others have done before me, from various motives. This is not your first court, nor your tenth. The ritual around you is compounded from thousands of years of hogwash, as witness my worshipful daughter who inherits a post from some time when every venturing hero had to have a leman patiently awaiting his return. My duties no doubt were originally medical. But the couch has been attending to that⁠—with some exceptions⁠—for centuries. And you may be assured, Man’s history has not been one unbroken triumph, nor his civilization any steady upward climb. But we built while you slumbered. I had thought to prevent your besmirching Man’s greatness with your cheap legend.”

“Or perhaps he was afraid of the god he denies,” Adelie murmured, her eyes glowing warmly.

Greaves looked from her to her father. “So she believes in me and you do not,” he said to Vigil. “But it may be you’re not entirely sure⁠—and from the looks she gives me, it may be she isn’t, either.” He grinned crookedly. “Man may have climbed, but I assure you he hasn’t changed.”

He smiled at the looks on both their faces. Divinity was new to him, but humanity was not. If these two had thought perhaps they had some dull-witted barbarian here⁠—the one for his faith in his faithlessness, the other for her pleasures⁠—it had been time their error was corrected.

“Old man, god or not I have been called out⁠ ⁠… whether it pleases you or not. And I won’t willingly lay me down to sleep again until I think it’s time. So you had better tell me what all this is about, or I will blunder around and perhaps break something you’re fond of.”

Adelie laughed.

Vigil swung his arm sharply toward her. “This⁠—this would-be courtesan was once Mayron’s great love, when he was First of us all. Because he could find nothing to conquer for her in all the Universe, he began dabbling beyond it for a worthy prize. And he found it. Oh, he found it, didn’t he, my child?”

“Be careful, Father,” Adelie spat. “The worshippers follow me now that I’ve wakened him as promised, and you⁠—”

“Quiet,” Greaves said mildly. “He was telling me something.”

“That I was,” Vigil said angrily, while his daughter’s look at Greaves was the least sure it had ever been, “and for all the need you have of it, I might as well not. But if I may say it once and get it said, I can then go to my meal and the two of you will be free to amuse yourselves. Mayron discovered the Shadows, when his machines touched some continuum beyond this one, and the Shadows ate him. But like the fox that lost his tail in the trap and then cozened other foxes with the lie that it was better so and fashionable besides, Mayron made a virtue of his slavery. Those who give themselves up to the Shadows never rest and never hunger. They know no barrier. And no love. No true joy. No noble sorrow. An untailed fox is safe from catching by the tail. A Shadow has no spirit, no humanity, no⁠—soul. But there are always dunderheads. Mayron has them, and down in that city of his down there⁠—” the old man waved a hand at the horizon, but all Greaves could see from where he stood were the glowing tops of what he took to be three fitfully active volcanoes⁠—“he has a city full of dunderheaded shadows who go to some temple he has built and enter the Shadow chamber to be changed. The admission is easily gained; the price of freedom from human care is humanity.”

“And up here,” Greaves said,