Eliot Fintushel - Izzy and the Father of Terror.pdf - Eliot Fintushel - margozap

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/knihy/700 SciFi, ...sic eBooks/Asimov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt

Eliot Fintushel: Izzy and the Father of

Terror

First appeared in Asimov's Science

Fiction, July 1997. Nominated for Best

Novella.

------------------------------------------

He who feels punctured

Must once have been a bubble.

–Lao Tze (trans. Witter Bynner)

ONE

1. A Hole in My Mind

I was thumbing through New Mexico with

nothing, headed nowhere, when I fell in

with a shaman named Shaman who pricked a

hole in my mind. A little prick it was,

but everything gushed in through it, and

everything spilled out. Suddenly, I could

not tell the difference between myself and

others or between my body and the rest of

the world.

"Don’t be afraid, Mel," Shaman said. I was

very afraid. We were sitting inside a long

canvas tent, the communal kitchen of the

Space People. All the other Space People

were asleep. They had picked me up outside

of Albuquerque and driven me out onto the

desert to their little spread. Because

Shaman liked me, they had picked me up.

Even though there were Chicanos in those

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/kn...ov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt (1 of 85)29.11.2003 19:47:59

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/knihy/700 SciFi, ...sic eBooks/Asimov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt

days who hated hippies, who conned their

way into communes and shot them up, and I

am as dark-skinned and small as a Mexican,

they had picked me up.

It was dark in the tent. Flaps open, stars

filled the big triangles at either end;

feeble candlelight unsealed the night

between us, loud with cicadas and dead

souls crying. There was a votive candle in

a shot glass on the dirt floor. Rococo

shadows angled and sprawled across chairs,

long table, canvas, and ourselves.

"You’ve broken me." The words jumped where

my bones should be. Something in me arched

and bristled like a frightened cat. Were

the words mine?

Shaman took them for mine. "I’m you," he

said. Incomprehensible. "Relax."

I left that place. I left the Space People

sleeping. I left Shaman with his kit of

tropes that killed or cured or pricked

your mind and left you to bleed to death

or to drown in the world’s blood, bleeding

into you through a tiny hole. The last

thing I saw there was the candle flame

reflected in Shaman’s eyes, two little

flames dwindling as I stumbled out into

the desert, out into stars and the cries

of cicadas and dead souls, which might

have been my tongue, my voice, my limbs,

or my self, since Shaman had pricked a

hole in my mind.

2. Talk with a Joshua Tree

I had a talk in the dark with a Joshua

tree. I said, "Everything’s okay. I have a

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/kn...ov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt (2 of 85)29.11.2003 19:47:59

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/knihy/700 SciFi, ...sic eBooks/Asimov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt

mother in New York. I have brothers and a

sister. My father left us, but he’s still

in my mind. In there, I can see the faces

of all the people in my life, I know the

names of everything, and no one on Earth

would disbelieve me." The Joshua tree was

unconvinced. I couldn’t remember my

mother’s face. I stood there, out of sight

of any highway, lost to the Space People,

stars in my skin. Someone had just spoken.

It might have been the Joshua tree. It

might have been the sand.

3. Izzy

Finally, tears gushed. I was sitting on a

curb by the highway before dawn. I was

dawn, not quite risen over a small, dark

man on a desert highway. I was a pool of

tears splash-fed by a biped above my

gutter. I was a tremble, a sob, a cicada,

a dead soul listening in. I don’t know

what I was. I was a car coming, high beam

illumining tear-slicked face, driver

coming in earshot of moaning figure, alone

in the desert, in the dark.

The car stopped a few yards past me, then

purred back. The passenger door flung

open, and a man leaned out, balding,

single-browed, a skinny man with a nasal

accent: "Get in, Jack. We ain’t got all

day."

I smelled jasmine, sweet and piercing.

Inside, beneath a red tassel hanging from

the rearview, a small soapstone elephant

was lit by the map light above the dash.

My tusks curled into the tangle of

threads. I had many arms. In my hands were

medicine bottles, knives, diamonds,

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/kn...ov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt (3 of 85)29.11.2003 19:47:59

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/knihy/700 SciFi, ...sic eBooks/Asimov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt

skulls, crushed demons, and snakes. A

naked woman scissored me.

I was sitting in Ganesha’s lap. My legs

embraced the elephant’s hips. My heels

massaged his buttocks. My nipples rubbed

his chest. I smiled, but held my lips

enticingly distant. The Indian behind the

wheel stroked my back.

Or perhaps I was from Pakistan. I was

irritated at Izzy. I, the driver, said,

"If I had wanted like this, I would have

stayed at my motel, Izzy. Do we have to

pick up everybody?"

"Exactly, Sarvaduhka," One-brow shot back.

"That’s who this piece of merchandise is:

everybody! Ain’t you, Jack?"

I pulled my sleeve across my face to erase

the tears. The car, a warm shell of light,

seemed heaven, but I couldn’t find where

to say yes from. When I tried to speak,

the car door groaned instead. It closed. I

was inside, in front, squeezed between the

door and the man with one long eyebrow.

"How did you know?" I tried to say;

instead, the sun rose.

4. Relic Background Radiation

Sarvaduhka pressed a button, and there was

the United States of America: news, music,

tractor pull ads?"SUNDAYYYYYY!"?static,

evangelist patter, a song by Johnny

Abilene . . .

There’s a splash across the southern sky

Named "I love you-oo!"

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/kn...ov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt (4 of 85)29.11.2003 19:47:59

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/knihy/700 SciFi, ...sic eBooks/Asimov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt

And I know just what a big man

Ought to do-yodelayhee-do.

I’m sorry I left you somewhere in the

blue-boo-hoo-hoo

With your mama singing lullabies to

baby-boo . . .

. . . used automobiles, paid political

announcements, weather reports . . .

"Wait a damn minute," Izzy said. "Turn it

back to the Haymakers, Duke. I wanna hear

that song."

"Haymakers, Izzy?"

"Gimme that." He pushed Sarvaduhka’s hand

away and manned the radio dial himself. I

felt as if someone were reaming my navel.

The smears of sound as the needle skimmed

the tuner scale were gurgles of cud

surging up my throat. Finally he found it.

There were the slightly off-key notes and

bad mixing that signal a live performance:

I’m gonna bring you right back some day.

Though you may be far away,

I can always pull a little stunt

That the folks call "epoché"

"Epoché?" Sarvaduhka took his eyes off the

road?me, a flat, black triangle long as

the desert, wide as the squareback here,

beetling to a point out there, and dotted

with my Bott’s dot vertebrae?to frown at

Izzy. "Did the Haymaker say epoché, Izzy?"

file:///C|/Documents and Settings/hasi•i/Dokumenty/Mar•an/kn...ov, Isaac/Nebula Stories - Izzy and the Father of Terror.txt (5 of 85)29.11.2003 19:47:59

Eliot Fintushel - Izzy and the Father of Terror.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: