A Rage for Revenge

48 Jason Makes a Choice

I finally went to see Delandro in his cell. After several private centuries of indecision, I went to see him.

I didn't know what I wanted to say to him-and I did. A thousand different speeches raced through my mind. I discarded them all as being inappropriate.

Part of me wanted to say, "How? How did we end up like this? I almost believed in you. I wanted to believe in you!"

I knew what he would say. "Good for you, James. You get to be right again. You're running your righteousness machine." And if I believed that, then he would be right again-and I didn't want to give him that opportunity to be right, because I was as tired of his self-righteousness as I was of mine.

What I wanted, very honestly, was revenge.

Total revenge. He had to see it for himself-that he had failed and I had won.

But of course, that was just me wanting to be right again. It was a neat little trap Jason had constructed around my mind. There Was no way out of it. I couldn't be right without automatically being wrong.

I guess what I really wanted was an apology for the damage he'd done to me.

Except he'd say that nobody can damage you except yourself. Everything he said put the blame on me and took it off him. All he was, was the delivery boy. It was my fault for accepting the package.

I unbuckled my gunbelt and left it with the guard. She unlocked the steel door and let me enter.

Delandro was laying on his bunk, his hands on his stomach, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. "I've been waiting for you," he said.

There was a chair. I sat down facing him. "You have a speech prepared, don't you?" I shook my head.

"No?" He hadn't moved. Now he turned his head and looked at me. "You're not telling the truth, Jim." And there was that great, warm grin again. He laughed. "You do have a speech prepared, pobably several speeches. And you've probably rehearsed them all. But you've decided not to deliver any of them. Is that the truth?"

"You've always been good at reading minds, Jason. Why should I argue with you?"

"You didn't come down here just to gloat," he said. "I trained you too well for that."

"Why am I here then?"

"Jim," he said, shaking his head. "Don't pretend to be stupid. Someone might believe it. You're here because you need to be complete with me before tomorrow. You know what's going to happen in that courtroom and you know what's going to happen afterward. And you know who's going to have to do it.

"You're going to kill me tomorrow, Jim. But you want me to forgive you first. Or you want me to beg for my life. Or you want me to give you some justification for killing me. Too bad. I'm not going to cooperate. You have no power over me, except what I'm willing to give you. I give you nothing."

I replied very quietly, "But I can give you something."

"Ah," he said. "Now, we get to the offer." He sat up opposite me. His eyes were still the most penetrating blue I'd ever seen. "Go on." He scratched his neck distractedly. I knew that gesture.

"I can give you a choice," I said. "The same one you gave me. You can live or you can die."

"You have a contribution you can make to the war effort. You know things about the worms. The army needs to know what you know. An arrangement can be made. You and your people will still be prisoners, but you'll live. Or . . ." I shrugged. "We'll have a trial."

"And you'll kill us."

"Do you want to live or die?"

"My survival mind wants to live, of course-but I think I'll choose to die. That way, there is nothing you can do except serve me again. You can carry out my wishes for me, Jim. You see, I may be confined, but I'm still in control. You can't even have revenge."

"In other words, you're not going to let me be complete, are you?"

He shook his head. "No. Why should I?"

"I don't know. I thought-I guess I was wrong, but for a while, I believed you were so enlightened that you loved all humanity."

"No. I never said that. I never did."

"My mistake," I acknowledged quietly. I met his gaze again. "Now, let's talk about your mistake."

"Yes?" He waited.

"It's the way you handle your . . . enrollments. You give people a choice between life or death. But you never had the authority to do that. You didn't have a real contract with the people you captured. The agreement was invalid. I never asked you for the opportunity. I never gave you the right to give me the choice between life or death. You assumed an authority you never had."

Delandro asked, "Do you want me to respond to that?" I nodded.

"I never had to ask your permission. I already had the authority. I was acting on behalf of the young god."

"That authority isn't recognized here," I said. "As long as this is a planet of human beings, you're under the authority of the government of human beings."

"And I don't recognize that authority."

"Too bad. Because that still leaves the question of disposition unresolved. What are your fellow human beings to do with you?"

"Jim, there's only one possible outcome for tomorrow's hearing. You know it and I know it. We both know what's going to happen and how it's going to happen. If you want, I'll even write out your dialogue for you."

"No thanks."

"My choice has already been made," Jason continued calmly. "It was made at my first Revelation and everything I have done has been the continuation of the process that began on that day. I serve the new gods. Whatever I have said and done has been part of that service."

"Your gods can't help you here," I said. "Not in this court. Like it or not, you're going to be judged by the members of your own species."

"The human race is incapable of judging itself-and I promise you that there are no human beings on this planet who can judge our actions, because we are no longer operating in a human context. We are beyond your experience. You don't realize it yet, Jim, but your authority has become irrelevant to the future."

"This is getting tiresome," I said.

"You can leave," Jason replied.

"I came down here to try to save your life. Not because I have any affection for you. I don't. But I want to know what you know about the worms."

"I don't want you to save my life. And if you want to know what I know about the worms . . . well, there's only one way you're going to learn it."

He studied me calmly. He's just a man, I told myself, but I couldn't quite bring myself to believe it. I'd seen him in the circle. I'd seen him at the Revelation.

"There's so much that you don't know, James. You shouldn't have fled the Revelations. You'd understand. You can no more fight the Chtorr than you can fight yourself. There is no victory down the path you follow."

I stood up. It was time to go. "It's over, Jason. Ended. You failed. The Tribe is gone. The children are dead. The babies are dead. The new gods are dead. All of them. Every one."

Jason stood up and looked me straight in the eye. His eyes were the sharp blue of the noonday sky. He came very close to me. "Jim, look at me. I'm not the man you think I am. I never was." He was unbuttoning his shirt.

"You need to know this. I see so much that is so far beyond your understanding. . . ." He stepped back so the light could hit him fully.

And then I saw.

There was fine pink fur all over his chest. He glistened with purple and orange patterns. I stared at him, horrified.

The fur was thickest in a line up his belly, all the way up from his groin to his breastbone; it thickened and stretched across his chest like a great red tree. It was almost beautiful. Jason shucked out of his pants and I could see how the fur was spreading down the inside of his thighs. He turned around and I could see that it was growing across his back. I saw pink and white strands peppering his hair as well.

"Touch me," he commanded.

Despite myself, I reached my hand out. The fur tingled like worm fur.

It was worm fur.

He turned around to face me again. "Jim-I can see you with my eyes closed. I can smell you and taste you. You smell of salt and fear and blood. You taste of loneliness. I can hear what you're thinking. You radiate in colors that you don't even know you have."

He stopped and looked at me oddly for a moment, peering curiously at a spot behind my eyes. And then he started laughing. "You really don't know, do you? You really are a victim."

And then he stopped himself and said, "You're right, Jim. I'm not human any more. I've transcended humanity. I've grown beyond it. I would have shared this gift with you, Jim. I wanted to, but you wouldn't let me, would you? You never understood how we all loved you. No. Because you won't let yourself be loved, by anyone. You're doomed to go through life putting turds in your own punch bowl and wondering why everything tastes so shitty. You poor damned fool, I feel so sorry for you, for what you've lost. You're a Judas, Jim. You've betrayed the living gods."

There was a lot I could have said to that, but I couldn't find the words. What I said instead was almost simplistic by comparison with Jason's vision. I just shook my head and said, "You made a terrible mistake when you attacked Family."

Jason was rebuttoning his shirt, tucking it back into his pants. He looked up at me with a hard expression. "I keep my word, Jim. I told you once, that if you ever broke your word to me, you would regret it bitterly. And that is exactly what has happened. No matter what you do in the future, you will always know that you broke your word. And you will always know that you had reason to regret it. There are people dead today who would not be dead had you kept your word."

"You can't put that blame on me."

"Jim, you know what your responsibility in the matter is. You know where you failed. There's nothing I have to say or do at all. You'll do it all yourself, far worse than I ever can."

"I'm not going to play word games with you any more, Jason. I came down here. I gave you a chance. My conscience is clean."

"That's bullshit and we both know it."

"You're no god," I said to him. "You know what your failure is? You wanted revenge on me. You may wrap it up in beautiful fancy language, but underneath it all, somewhere in there, it's still nothing more than revenge, isn't it?"

"I kept my word, James. As I said I would." He returned to his bunk and sat down. He was dismissing me.

I didn't move. "You know, you were right about something you said to me once. I don't want to kill. But I kill. I don't want to kill you. But I will. If I have to."

"I've told you my choice. I think I'll die now."

"Unfinished? Incomplete?"

He laughed. "I'm not incomplete, Jim. I'm fulfilled. I've come farther than any human being before me; but this isn't the end of the process. Oh, no. There's still so much more to come. This is only where I stop, Jim, not the work.

"Nature is abundant. She'll keep spawning prophets until one of us accomplishes the transformation of the species. It was never important that I be the one to complete the work, only that the work gets completed. And what I've done isn't wasted either. I've helped pave the way, helped make it easier for the next prophet.

"In that regard, I envy you, Jim; because it's very possible that you will live long enough to see the work completed. I promise you that it will be. Nothing you or anyone can do can stop it. The work will be finished. If not by me, then by someone else. Perhaps . . . " He smiled, and the effect was terrifying. "Perhaps, Jim, you might even be the one to someday finish what we started here."

"I'll burn in hell first," I said.

"Yes, that's the other possibility." I closed the door behind me.

He would not let me be complete. The bastard. His skill was at keeping people off balance. He'd done it to me again.

And tomorrow, I would have to do it to him.