Lord of the Fantastic: Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny

MOVERS AND SHAKERS PAUL DELLINGER

The Swordsman regarded himself in the full-length mirror of the California hacienda, made sure that all his accoutrements were in place from the black mask on his face to the black boots on his feet, turned, and stepped into the shimmering portal in the middle of the opposite wall.

Another Masked Man on a powerful white stallion rode full-tilt across the Texas prairie into an even larger outdoor portal, his ringing signature cry fading even as he disappeared from view. More riders followed—the Duke, the Redhead, the Bullwhip Man, and several others known jointly as the Singers.

From atop one of the tallest trees in a primeval rain forest, the Jungle Man swung from branch to branch to vine and into yet another portal surrounded by steamy vegetation concealing it from anyone it had not called. . . .

The Sleuth penned a message for his biographer to leave in the London apartment they shared, stating that he would be gone for a day or so on one of those journeys about which he could not speak, even afterward. . . .

A shadowy figure whose face was concealed beneath a wide slouch hat disappeared into a portral concealed inside one of the city subway tunnels, a hollow laugh echoing in the space where he had stood just before he vanished. . . .

Once more the planets were aligned, the tidal stresses that affected their alternaties surfacing, and the latest battle between the Changers and Maintainers was about to be joined.

It was night on the great plain where the Swordsman emerged. The stars looked much as he remembered them in the skies of Old California, but he had no way of knowing on whose world the morning sun would be rising. The issue would be settled by then, he knew, at the moment of maximum planetary duress, whenever it struck. There was never any way of knowing, exactly. In fact, there had been little time for him to prepare; there had been only the sudden, instinctive knowing of what was to come, and the creation of the portal in his own hacienda, and the knowledge that he would be the leader of those allied to his cause, this time.

What forces, he wondered? He was a leader of men he did not know, against forces he could not understand, because he was the prime shade—whatever that meant. He was given to understand that, in the prime world, he had more, incarnations than any of those summoned to help him, from prose and illustrated literature, from the flickering shadows that battled across large and small viewing screens of some kind, and because his own dual identity had been the basis for so many of the other shades that followed, the man of action whose real identity was a pretense of timidity and appeasement. It predated the Man of Steel and his imitators. Even now, with the enlightenment conferred on him by the calling, the Swordsman was not sure who the Man of Steel might be but, from what he gleaned about that man’s powers, he wished that other could have been here instead of himself.

“I can imagine how you feel, sir.” A deep and almost rumbling voice came from behind him.

The Swordsman spun around, surprised that anyone could have approached so closely without his having heard—but then he realized this man must have just emerged from his own portal. He found himself facing a large heavily browed man, wearing a suit of some sort with a loosened cravat knotted around his thick neck and a look of immense sadness on his face.

“Should I know you?” the Swordsman asked.

“No.” The man shook his head, with a cheerless smile. “You can call me Larry, if you wish. No, I’m on the other side. Or, I will be, when the moon rises. I won’t be able to help myself.”

The Swordsman touched the scabbard at his side. “Then why should I not slay you immediately, señor?”

“Probably you should, if you could. In fact, it would be a relief, to me. Even a man who is pure in heart . . . But never mind that. You haven’t the means to kill me, unless that sword of yours is made of purest silver. Only such as that can kill a werewolf.”

Werewolf! The word awakened an awareness in the Swordsman’s mind, something which had been planted there at his calling but not brought forth until now. This was one of—what were they called?—the Universals. These would be the major antagonists at this alignment.

“Yes, I can see you understand,” the tormented man before him said. “I wish I could help you more, while I’m still myself. I can tell you this—the Vlad commands us, by virtue of his many incarnations and powers. His dates go back farther than yours, and are more varied. He has been interpreted by more actors, writers, illustrators, and other creators on the prime world even than you. You will need more than your sword of metal to combat him. You would need, would ...”

He broke off, as a third figure appeared on the starlit plain. “Enough!” the figure hissed, standing before the man called Larry with his eyes blazing and arms upraised menacingly. “You haff said enough. You vill obey only me, from this point on.”

To the Swordsman, Larry appeared to be the more physically imposing of the two. Yet he cowered back from the smaller, pale man with the dark lips and slicked-back widow’s peak. But then the figure changed, growing taller, his eyes becoming redder, his hair thicker and the canine teeth at the corners of his mouth more prominent. “Go your way, werewolf,” the man said in a voice that seemed deeper, and with a more English accent than before. “Begone, until I summon you.” And then the figure changed again, his legs and body seeming to shrivel up toward his outstretched arms, which became batlike wings on either side of a face which was human no longer . . .

The Swordsman’s blade swished out before him, flashing at the batlike thing that dived at him. The point struck true, catching the creature almost directly between its blazing red eyes—but, as he yanked it free, the bloodred hole which it left diminished, growing smaller until it was gone completely, while the creature simply hovered with a gentle flapping of its great bat wings.

“A cross!” Larry called. “Make a cross.”

A hissing sound emerged from the creature, seemingly directed at Larry. It rose slightly into the air, then dived again. The Swordsman whipped a long knife from another scabbard on his belt, crossed it over his sword and held them up before him. The bat creature veered away with an awful, moaning sound—and abruptly it was gone. It was nowhere to be seen. And neither was Larry.

Sheathing his weapons, the Swordsman breathed a sigh of relief and readjusted his mask over his eyes. Sometimes it tended to slip at the most inconvenient of times. The instinct implanted in him by the calling through the portal told him to travel east, toward where the sun would rise, signaling the end of the battle. Choosing his direction by the stars, he began to walk.

The plain was by no means empty. Desertlike plants and unnatural-looking rock formations provided plenty of places where Larry could have concealed himself. But the Swordsman had been looking directly at Vlad when he disappeared. Bat creatures . . . werewolves . . . only now was he beginning to realize how far he was out of his depth. It was one thing to match sword skill with a soldier of a corrupt governor, or even a half-dozen such soldiers. But what did he know of supernatural opponents?

On he marched, this time immediately aware of the presence of another, just behind and keeping pace with him. He turned to the newcomer, seeing a tall, ascetic-looking man with a rounded cap upon his head and a coat with a capelike attachment. The Swordsman dropped back to walk beside him. “An unusual uniform for the kind of combat we may expect, señor,” he observed.

“Indeed,” the man replied. “But more serviceable, perhaps, than a costume which seems more fitting for a mummer’s ball. We could reach our destination more quickly had you brought along your horse from the western part of your country instead of a mask.”

“How did you know of my horse? Or my country, for that matter?”

“Your boots seem made for riding. And even in this dim light, I can see how the inside of your trousers are slightly frayed in a pattern which would match a saddle— an elaborate saddle of the type used in the American West, I believe.”

“And your position in this situation?”

“The same as yours, I perceive, although not through any power of reasoning. I seem to have been told in some arcane manner what this battle involves—whether we are to continue to live according to the kinds of scientific laws we can discover and harness, or change to some supernatural sets of laws that change as different elementals assume more or less power over the rest of us. As a sleuth, I am firmly in favor of maintaining discoverable constancy.”

“Does your power of reason provide any explanation as to how we have come to be in this situation?”

The Sleuth sighed. “None whatsoever. I have an impression that it involves the positions of the planets, but I know nothing of astronomy. I have always thought the human mind could store only so much data, and I did not wish to clutter my own with extraneous material.”

“Perhaps such material was not as extraneous as you had thought.”

“I cannot argue the point, given our situation. Can you provide any information about it?”

The Swordsman told him about the encounter with Larry and the creature called Vlad.

“It sounds like a vampire,” the Sleuth said. “I once looked into the superstition, when I was asked to investigate the appearance of an incident of vampirism. Its explanation had nothing to do with such creatures, but I do remember what I read of them. In my environs, I would have relegated the idea to the Brothers Grimm. But here . . .” He paused, as though deep in thought. “Tell me,” he finally said, “the exact words of this man, Larry, to you.”

The Swordsman complied.

By the time he had finished, another man had popped into existence to join them. This one introduced himself as Clayton—first in French, but switching to English as he found that the language his companions had in common—but said he was probably known better as the Jungle Man. Neither name meant anything to the Swordsman, but the man seemed lithe and powerful beneath his clothing, similar to what Larry had worn, and such an ally was not to be dismissed lightly.

His senses also proved sharper. “A band of men await us,” he said, “over the next hill. It must be an ambush. They are trying to be very quiet.”

“Then how is it you can hear them?” inquired the Sleuth.

Clayton smiled. “I smell them.”

As the leader of their growing band, the Swordsman ordered stealth rather than confrontation. He felt their side had not rallied all its supporters yet, and had no idea what the opposition might be like. With the Jungle Man leading—he had stripped off his clothing but for a loincloth, claiming the exposure increased his sensitivity to what lurked around them—they made their way around the hill to avoid those who were expecting them.

The Jungle Man did not have to warn them about their next encounter. The slow, regular pounding of heavy footsteps was audible to them all. In unison, they crouched behind a rock and peeped over its top at what the now-rising moon revealed in the clearing ahead.

The man was gargantuan. Even the fat sergeant on whom the Swordsman occasionally carved an initial would have been dwarfed by him. His arms jutted out in front of him, almost like those of a sleepwalker. His massive, heavy-lidded face had a fixed expression as he passed by their position.

“I don’t understand,” the Jungle Man whispered. “He has no scent. It’s as though he is not a living man.”

“Somehow that would not surprise me,” the Swordsman replied. “None of those who would change our world, among those I have met so far, are remotely like anyone alive I have ever seen.”

“I would suggest that we follow him,” the Sleuth said. “At a very safe distance.”

That was not difficult. Even if they had not kept him in sight, he generated enough sound as he walked through the bushes and plants rather than around them, with footsteps that sounded like drumbeats. Eventually they saw two others converging on an open area with rock walls on its other three sides, chosen no doubt because it could be well protected. The Swordsman recognized one of them as Vlad, in that first Middle European persona. The other shambled forward with a limp, one arm tucked to his body, and swathed from head to foot in what seemed to be long white wrappings.

“A living mummy,” breathed the Sleuth. “What next?”

As though in reply, the Jungle Man pointed to a hirsute manlike figure with the fangs and facial features of a wolf. Larry had not been joking, the Swordsman realized.

“My gypsies still avait our enemies,” Vlad was proclaiming to them. “Should they elude my human followers, they must still deal with us, the new children of the night,” he said, with a dry chuckle. “By sunrise, the prime shade and all its shadows will be our kind. ...”

“Here!” a new voice called, seemingly right behind the Swordsman. “They are right here, watching you.”

“Griffin!” Vlad said. “Where are you?”

The Swordsman was wondering the same thing. He heard the voice right in their midst, but saw no one even in the moonlight.

“When you have eliminated the impossible ...” murmured the Sleuth. “Jungle Man, can you detect our invisible enemy?”

The reply was a flash of the Jungle Man’s clenched fist, which struck something unseen with a meaty thunk and elicited a grunt of pain. An impact like that of a body falling to the ground followed. The Sleuth had produced a pistol with a revolving cylinder from beneath his coat, firing at the approaching wolf, mummy, and automatonlike figures. The Swordsman’s surprise at a pistol which fired more than once without reloading was quickly overcome by the realization that those balls were having no effect whatever. “Away from here,” he whispered.

“But which way?” said the Sleuth. “They are more masters of the night than we. ...”

“This way,” spoke yet another new voice. The Swordsman could barely see the dim outline of a man with a large hat concealing his face and a great coat hiding the rest of him. He blended in so well with the darkness that he had seemed as invisible as their last antagonist. He lifted an arm and pointed a long gloved finger toward a break in the brush. “I will lead them in another direction,” he said, and then began a low, almost-crackling laugh that faded off toward the approaching Universals.

Retreat seemed inglorious to the Swordsman, but it was obvious their weapons would not save them. So he led off the way their new ally had pointed, and his two companions followed. Time seemed to stretch as they pushed their way through bushes, over rocks and, finally, onto a ledge from which it seemed they could see over much of the plain. They saw the fires and wagons of the distant camp of the gypsies mentioned by Vlad. Swords and pistols should be effective against them, all right, but they out-numbered the three—or four—men fighting to maintain their world as it was. And nothing seemed effective against those Universals.

He noticed the bronzed muscles of the Jungle Man tense, then relax. “Our other friend is here,” he said.

Only then did the Swordsman see the silhouette of the figure in the wide hat once more. “How do you do that?’’ he demanded. “Do both of us have invisible warriors on our sides?”

A nasty-sounding laugh answered him. “You might say that,” the figure replied. “For the moment, I have them chasing each other. But they will soon be on our trail again, especially that one who is part wolf. He won’t have any trouble picking up our track.”

“I’m sure,” murmured the Jungle Man.

“But he may be the key to our survival,” said the half-visible man. “Do any of you know what movies are?”

“I do,” the Jungle Man said. “I once tried out for the role of myself in a motion picture. But I didn’t get the part.”

“I had heard of some experiments in England with projecting moving pictures by Friese-Greene and Paul, and in America by Thomas Edison,” the Sleuth said. The Swordsman continued to look blank.

“All right,” said the shrouded figure. “Suffice to say movies are one of those art forms from which all of you derive your substance in this shade. That is less true for me—I’m more in the radio and comic books media. Never mind. My point is that movies are the major incarnations or the Universals as well, especially the wolf, mummy and the man of parts, the big man. In fact, the same actor who is famous for the wolf role has also contributed to the others. Eliminate him, and we may stand a chance of weakening those other two incarnations.”

“I don’t pretend to understand this,” the Jungle Man said, “but I’m willing. How do we do it?”

“That’s a good question. In the movies, the best method is a silver bullet.”

“Since we are in no position to mine any silver,” said the Sleuth, “I would suggest we concentrate on Vlad.” He turned to the Swordsman. “From what you told me of Larry’s words, I have an idea what he was trying to tell you. The word ‘would,’ you know, has another spelling and another meaning. If I can borrow the formidable-looking knife of yours, I may be able to fashion an appropriate weapon from some of this tree growth below us.”

“Whatever you do, you’d better do it fast,” the Jungle Man said. “I smell gypsies approaching again. ...”

Soft laughter interrupted him. “I’ll see if I can’t lead them astray, too, while you make your preparations.” His voice faded off and, although the Swordsman looked carefully, he did not see his departure.

The Swordsman did not pretend to understand the forces of nature that arrayed these two sides against one another. But it did not seem to fit that one side should have so many more forces to deploy than the other. He was convinced that those who would maintain the world as he knew it had more allies who, he fervently hoped, would show up very soon.

No sooner had the Sleuth returned his knife with another weapon he had made than the sounds of the approaching gypsies could be heard below. The Swordsman stood. “Amigos, I suppose we might as well make our stand here. At least we have the advantage of the high ground. . . .” He noticed the Jungle Man’s nose twitching. “Something?”

“Men and animals. Approaching the open area behind us, down below. I have no way of knowing if they are friends or more enemies, but ...”

“Si. We know those approaching from this side are enemies. What do we have to lose? Come on.”

They scrambled down the back of their ledge, just ahead of Vlad’s forces scaling the front—men with heads wrapped in colorful kerchiefs, knives gripped in their hands and teeth, scrambling up toward them. The stalkers made it to the top, only to find their prey retreating below them on the opposite side. The Swordsman drew his weapons, the Sleuth checked the loads of his pistol, the Jungle Man crouched pantherlike, and the strangely clouded figure in the slouch hat rejoined them as they formed a circle, protecting each other’s backs, from those closing in around them.

A ringing cry from the open area behind them was echoed by the sound of hoofbeats and then a volley of gunshots. The Swordsman spun around to see another Masked Man leading the charge of what seemed to be a posse of American cowboys.

And then the gypsies were upon them. The Swordsman’s long and short blades flashed in the moonlight, as he slashed with increasing desperation at those who were slashing at him. Someone jumped onto his shoulders, bearing him to the ground. He glimpsed the upraised knife from the corner of his eye, and tried to turn in time to ward off the blow. There was a crack with a different sound than the pistol shots, and he saw the end of a long bullwhip wrapped around the wrist of his attacker. The black-clad man at the other end of the whip gave a pull, and the attacker fell back.

And then it was over. The gypsies were retreating on foot, the horsemen in pursuit. The Swordsman started to breathe a sigh of relief, and found himself staring into the baleful red eyes of Vlad.

“So it comes down to this,” he hissed. “The two leaders. There was no way you could have defeated me, Swordsman. The outcome was inevitable this time. Even now, back in the prime world, my incarnations have become more heroic in their depictions. No longer are my kind seen as an evil scourge, but rather as graceful immortals to which the prime humans increasingly aspire. I will treat you as I did the Turkish invaders of my land. One blow ...”

The Swordsman leaped back, dropping his sword to the ground and reaching for something else stuck in the back of his belt. Before he could draw it, he saw a flash of brownish fur streaking toward him and a flash of yellowish eyes and teeth gleaming with malice. “Larry,” he called out. “No!”

A shot rang out. The Swordsman had seen how ineffective previous shots against this creature had been. But this one hurled him back, leaving him growling and pawing at the wound in his upper right shoulder.

The Masked Man on the white horse kept the pistol aimed at the snapping figure, lest it rise and attack again. “I perceive,” the Sleuth said to him, “that you carry silver bullets in your weapons?’’

Then Vlad was at him again, but the Swordsman had now managed to draw the wooden swordlike weapon which the Sleuth had fashioned for him. With a straight-arm thrust, he plunged it into the heart of the other. It broke in his hand, but most of it remained impaled in the creature, whose shape changed even as he watched. There was a scream, which seemed to hold centuries of evil in its release, and then, on the face, a look of peace. . . .

And then there was nothing but a skeleton beneath the rags of clothing, sprawled on the ground in front of the new portal which sprang into being, and drew the Swordsman toward it.

He was lying on a bed in his hacienda, the glow of the portal fading out behind him before he could think to look for it. “A strange dream,” he murmured, pulling the mask and wiping perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. “What could have prompted such a nightmare . . . ?”

His voice stopped as he looked down at his other hand, and opened it to drop the broken handle of the wooden sword to the floor.

I had listened to Roger Zelazny give a reading once at a convention. It was polished and flawless, and left me with the impression that he was rather stiff, formal and maybe a little shy.

It was not until 1993, when he was guest of honor at a convention in Lynchburg, Virginia, that I got to know him better. I had read his books all the way back to This Immortal and The Dream Master. In fact, he and I had our first short stories published the same year (1962, by Amazing/Fantastic editor Cele Goldsmith). I also had the benefit of having read Jane Lindskold’s 1993 book on Zelazny’s work by the time I really got to know him.

There was nothing stiff or formal about Roger Zelazny by then. Hopping acrobatically atop tables to give his talks (“Once I attain this measure of heights, my voice appears to project better,” he said with a grin. “I just do this for acoustics!”), he regaled us with all kinds of revelations about his career:

How his novel Damnation Alley became a movie: A reviewer had described it as featuring bikers, volcanoes and gratuitous violence, he said. Someone in Hollywood saw that, and decided it would make a good picture.

How “For a Breath I Tarry,” published in New Worlds in 1966, helped classify him as an experimental New Wave writer: “The printer must have been a member of the New Wave also,” he said, because the story was garbled, paragraphs transposed and entire sentences left out. Editor Michael Moorcock later apologized, but said he was still getting letters from subscribers about what a wonderful story it was.

A tip for collectors of original manuscripts: Roger had a cat which got into a drawer where he had the manuscript-in-progress for Deus Irae, his collaboration with Philip K. Dick, and urinated on it. Roger quickly copied the pages and the stains, fortunately, did not show up. Doubleday was happy with the story but insisted on being sent the original manuscript. So he complied. “I never got a reaction,” he said. “I never saw the manuscript again. I don’t know what they did with it. It’s probably one of those mysteries it’s better not to know.” But, he advised, if someone at a convention ever offers to sell you that manuscript, there is a way to determine its authenticity.

How the well-received Creatures of Light and Darkness had never been meant for publication: “It was only by accident that a publisher found out it existed,” Roger said. He wrote it as an experiment, trying out different styles (one entire chapter was in free verse) that he might want to use someday. When he mentioned it to Samuel R. Delany, Delany mentioned it to Lawrence Ashmead at Doubleday, who asked to see it. “You won’t like it,” Roger insisted. Two weeks later, Ashmead called back: “I like it.” It stayed in print for thirty years. “I can only come to the conclusion from this that you never know what will catch on,” Roger said.

The success of the Amber series: “I had no idea how many there were going to be, and I was really appalled by how they caught on.”

His favorites among his books: The Immortal, his first; Lord of Light, his most ambitious: Doorways in the Sand; Eye of Cat; and his most recent at that time, A Night in the Lonesome October, because it was something totally different.

“I wrote The Lonesome October in six weeks. It makes me sound like a hack,” he said. He found himself skipping meals and losing sleep. “I’m so taken with the story, I can’t stop.”

When I was offered the opportunity to submit a story for this collection, I wanted to do something like Roger did with Corwin in the first Amber book, where the character had no memory of how he got into his situation and had to rely on his wits to keep others from realizing his handicap. It had a great Raymond Chandleresque mystery tone in its opening chapters. I reread parts of the Lindskold book, hoping to find a way to get a grip on that feel. Instead, her writing about Zelazny’s uses of classical and popular mythologies inspired me to try a tribute to The Lonesome October.

Roger also helped other writers get published, editing recent anthologies like Wheel of Fortune and The Williamson Effect. His acceptance note on my story for the latter is the nicest I’ve ever gotten, from any editor.

And, as you can see by the book you are now holding, he is still helping writers get published.

In a future where virtual reality makes anything possible, a young woman discovers the ultimate thrill.